Recently, while talking about anchoring, I mentioned the government attempt to break up Microsoft (MSFT) back in 2001 and how it looks silly now in retrospect to think that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows would give the company too dominant of a monopoly.

Well, breaking up “big tech” is back in the news these days thanks to democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposal entitled “Here’s how we can break up Big Tech“. She is by far not the only candidate to have proposed breaking up larger tech companies or increasing regulations on them.

The US government isn’t the only regulator to worry about. In recent years, the EU has levied a few pretty hefty fines against Alphabet (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) and rumor has it they have their eyes on Amazon (AMZN) and Facebook (FB) as well. Additionally, India has begun putting in place regulations which effectively handicapped foreign companies like Amazon from doing business in the country.

This isn’t a political blog, so there’s no need for me to go into my thoughts on how wise these actions are. However, government regulation and threats to break up companies is a very clear factor to consider when investing as it can quickly change the narrative around an investing thesis. I mentioned previously that for the most part I tend to avoid investing in some of the larger companies (Amazon being the glaring exception) and this is among the many reasons why. Success attracts attention from the government and that attention is rarely favorable.

One of the “Cons” mentioned when I wrote about “Why Amazon is my Largest Holding” was “government intervention” and this is precisely the reason why. If two years from now we have a President Warren and there is real talk about lawsuits to split Amazon Web Services off from Amazon or to ban them from running advertising then that is a very large blow to the growth story for the company.

It’s far too early to anticipate what will happen in an election so far away, but the situation does bear monitoring. I’m still confidently holding my Babylon 5 level position in Amazon, but for the first time in a long time I can see a scenario where I might want to trim that position a few years down the line.