Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway seems to be done with selling its prodigious Apple stake after having reduced its Apple stock holdings by nearly 50% in the second quarter.
The company’s 13-F report, released late Wednesday afternoon, offers a hint that Berkshire may have completed its sales.
The 13-F showed that Berkshire owned exactly 400 million shares of the iPhone maker on June 30 after cutting the stake by some 389 million shares in the second quarter. The 10-Q information on the Apple stake was less precise on the exact size of the stake.
Some Berkshire watchers think Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett, who oversees the $300 billion equity portfolio, likes round numbers and that the 400 million figure is significant for that reason. It’s notable that Berkshire also owns exactly 400 million shares of Coca-Cola, which the company has held at that level for more than 25 years.
“It’s just too much of a coincidence to end the quarter at exactly 400,000,000 shares,” one Berkshire watcher told Barron’s. He thinks Buffett may have told his trader at Berkshire’s Omaha headquarters to stop selling Apple at 400 million.
MacDailyNews Take: Two pieces of advice from Warren Buffett that we value highly:
• Diversification is a protection against ignorance.
• Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
As my taxes, food, gas, insurance costs, etc. — SKYROCKET during the CLUELESS Biden/Harris economics administration — I cannot get enough comfort knowing a multi-billionaire trading extraordinaire is supposedly done selling billions of dollars of Apple shares to enrich himself…
As a “conservative/R,” it bugs you that another, that happens to has riches and or, has done well for himself, is selling/realizing gain to “enrich” himself, or to enjoy the fruit of his labor?
The sentiment has the ring of the oppressed/oppressor mindset that’s commonly associated with Team D…that you besmirch in the 1st sentence.
Well, it’s not the fruit of his labor, it’s the fruit of his capital investment strategy, but otherwise, yeah.
Please don’t hurl FALSE extrapolations, obviously you missed the sarcasm…
What have you got against people enriching themselves by selling their assets? Oh, I see. YOU haven’t done well in the Biden/Harris post-pandemic economic recovery, so no one else should, either.
Another FALSE extrapolation clown.
The pathetic “post-pandemic economic recovery” is also FALSE, as the bad economy is the NUMBER ONE voter issue topping the polls.
Get a grip…
Especially fitting announcement now as AAPL re-approaches ATH (<5% away).
I’m not real savvy on this stuff, but I don’t understand how selling all of this stock and having to pay $15 Billion in taxes is a smart move. By holding it you at least get a dividend, but now you have to invest the money you have left into something that is more valuable, at least in the long run. If diversifying is your strategy then why buy that much Apple stock in the first place?
I’m going to take my cue from Warren Buffet. Once my stake in AAPL also reaches 400,000,000 shares, I, too, will stop buying.
Selling AAPL near its all-time high is simply profit-taking. He’s not liquidating his position for any reason having to do with Apple itself, or the computer market in general, and he continues to say that he believes Apple is a very high quality business. He’s already stated he’s allocating lots of assets and cash to trusts that will distribute his wealth after he is gone.
I am sure if asked he would question why so many investors are pumping so much cash into anything AI related. Most companies claiming to use AI cannot even define the term, never mind explain what they do that offers any profitability improvement with it. Dotcom bubble all over again, and Buffet knows it.
However it is also true that Buffet’s recent track record seems more the case of winning because of the herd of copycats following him rather than him choosing new best-in-class businesses. Since his latest big winner, AAPL, most of the new positions Buffet has taken have been rather lacklustre, and burning tons of cash to buoy Berkshire stock is not investing, its financial BS that happens when management gets lazy.