@destriero I was involved in one of the tranches and recall looking at the total position in detail around 2009. The losses were somewhere in the 5.5bn range, but not 8. FWIW, these things are still haunting the dealers that took these trades down, due to their exotic nature.
IIRC BRK eventually took an $8B write-down on the position. The SPX outperformed many of the indices.
According to the paper srinir posted, Buffett's main strategy is bet against beta and not shorting puts: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X13002675
This thread is not about Buffet's main strategy. Read the heading again, out loud. Repeat it and get back to me.