How did Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway post such a big loss in the last year?

For long, Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway have been viewed as the fund that can do no wrong. Apparently, the Coronavirus pandemic did not spare Buffett either. Berkshire's first-quarter net loss came in at $49.75 billion mainly from common stock. A year earlier, net profits for the corresponding period were $21.66 billion. Quarterly operating profit, which Buffett considers a better performance measure, rose 6% to $5.87 billion from $5.56 billion. However, this loss is looking very large because Buffett follows the accounting rule at Berkshire to report unrealized stock losses and gains with earnings. This causes huge swings in Berkshire's net results that Buffett considers meaningless. The good news is that investors are saved the negative surprises in the last minute. In a way that is good practice.