CEO Greg Abel made a major housecleaning of Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B) stock portfolio in the first quarter. The holding company, of which Warren Buffett remains chairman, initiated stakes in Delta Air Lines (DAL) and Macy's (M) and added to some other key positions. The big news, however, was a mass exodus from more than a dozen holdings.

Abel now oversees Berkshire's equity portfolio, although Buffett keeps his hand in and plays a key advisory role. Investment manager Ted Weschler also continues to manage perhaps 5% of Berkshire's stock investments.

But the late-2025 departure of former co-portfolio manager Todd Combs — now at JPMorgan Chase (JPM) — has at least partly contributed to Berkshire's holdings getting a fresh new look. Several names thought to have been Combs' picks are no more.

At any rate, Berkshire was very busy during the first quarter. In what was perhaps a nod to stretched valuations, it was once again a net seller of stocks. The company bought $16 billion worth of equities and sold $24 billion. Berkshire has now sold more stocks than it has bought for 14 consecutive quarters. Net sales amounted to $8 billion, up from net sales of about $4 billion in the previous three-month period.

In the past three years, Berkshire sold more than $200 billion worth of equities. However, the company did begin buying back its own stock under Abel after halting repurchases in May 2024.

With a market cap of more than $1 trillion, Berkshire maintains a sort of "barbell" portfolio, as it holds approximately $280 billion in stocks and more than $380 billion in cash.

Although Berkshire has become more cautious, it did do some shopping in Q1. In addition to buying Delta and department-store operator Macy's, the holding company increased stakes in three of its holdings.

On the other hand, Berkshire pared back bets on six positions — and closed out 16 others.

Before we get into Berkshire's most recent purchases and sales, it's important to know that Buffett always ran a highly concentrated portfolio.

Excluding the company's Japanese brokerage stocks and other overseas equities, Apple (AAPL) alone accounts for more than a fifth of Berkshire's stock portfolio. (That's down from more than 40% at its peak.)

Furthermore, Berkshire's top five U.S. equity holdings comprise about 67% of its portfolio value, while the top 10 account for 90%.

As Buffett likes to say, diversification is for those who don't know what they're doing.

Stocks that Berkshire is buying

Buffett famously avoided airlines for decades. When he finally did come around, his timing was terrible, spreading his bets among a handful of major carriers not too long before COVID-19 set the industry into a tailspin. As a result, he quickly closed out those positions.

It's a mark of change that Berkshire initiated a stake in Delta in Q1, buying 39.8 million shares worth $2.6 billion. With a portfolio weight of a bit more than 1%, the air carrier is Berkshire's 14th-largest holding.

Berkshire also made a bet on the consumer discretionary sector, picking up 3 million shares in Macy's. The tiny position in the department store operator was worth $55 million as of the end of Q1. At less than 0.1% of the portfolio, M stock is Berkshire's 27th-largest investment.

More interesting, Berkshire more than tripled its stake in Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL). The holding company now owns 54 million shares worth $15.6 billion as of the end of Q1. With a weight of 5.9%, the Google parent's Class A shares are Berkshire's seventh-largest U.S. equity holding. Berkshire first bought GOOGL in the third quarter of 2025.

Relatedly, Berkshire initiated a stake in Alphabet Class C (GOOG) stock, picking up 3.6 million shares during the first three months of the year. With a value of $1 billion, the Class C investment accounts for Berkshire's 19th-largest holding.

In another vote of confidence in an existing position, Berkshire tripled its holdings of The New York Times Co. (NYT), adding another 10 million shares during Q1. With a market value of $1.3 billion, or 0.5% of the portfolio, NYT is Berkshire's 17th-largest investment — up from 30th place when it first bought the stock at the end of 2025.

Berkshire also added to homebuilder Lennar (LEN), an investment Berkshire initiated last year. The holding company bought another 3 million shares to bring its total stake to 10 million. With a market value of $877 million, LEN accounts for 0.3% of the portfolio, or the 21st-largest investment. Berkshire picked up more Lennar Class B (LEN.B) stock, as well. However, at less than 0.1% of the portfolio, it's essentially immaterial to a company of Berkshire's size.

Stocks Berkshire is selling

Berkshire reversed course on Chevron (CVX) in Q1, cutting its position in the integrated oil major by 35%. After boosting its stake in Q4, the holding company sold 46 million shares to start the year. Berkshire, which has owned the Buy-rated Dow Jones stock since the fourth quarter of 2020, still owns more than 84 million shares worth $17.5 billion as of quarter's end. With a weight of more than 6.6% in the portfolio, CVX remains Berkshire's fifth-largest holding.

In another reprise from previous quarters, Buffett once again sold Bank of America (BAC) stock, which has been a major holding since 2017. Don't panic, though. Berkshire reduced its investment in the nation's second-largest bank by assets by less than 1%.

With 513 million shares worth more than $25 billion as of March 31, BAC slipped one place, to Berkshire's No. 3 holding.

In other sales, Berkshire continued to ease up on DaVita (DVA), its 11th-largest holding, this time 5%. The company also massively reduced exposure to Constellation Brands (STZ), a stake it initiated at the end of 2024, by 95%.

Elsewhere, Berkshire cut its stakes in Liberty Live Holdings (LLYVK) and Nucor (NUE), but with portfolio weights of less than 1%, respectively, these names don't move the needle.

The biggest changes came in the form of exits. After slashing its stake by 77% last quarter, Berkshire closed out its position in Amazon.com (AMZN).

Several other familiar names were also banished from the portfolio. Apparently, Berkshire is no longer a fan of payments processors, having exited its stakes in both Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA). The holding company owned both stocks since 2011.

Also getting the boot were Charter Communications (CHTR), Diageo (DEO), UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Domino's Pizza (DPZ), Heico (HEI), Lamar Advertising (LAMR), Formula One Group (FWONK), Atlanta Braves Holdings (BATRK), Pool Corp. (POOL), Allegion (ALLE), Aon (AON), Liberty Latin America Class A (LILA) and Liberty Latin America Class C (LILAK).

The bottom line on Berkshire's holdings

While the Visa and Mastercard exits represent significant changes, Abel cleaned up a slew of mostly immaterial bets Berkshire picked up in the past few years. While the portfolio remains top-heavy, its concentration is now weighted more to its top 10 holdings, with less exposure to the top five.

It's a new era, indeed.

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Who would have believed at the turn of the 21st century that there would be such a thing as a trillion-dollar stock? (Or that the Dow would reach 36,000, for that matter?)

At the end of 2000, the most valuable company was Exxon Mobil (XOM), with a market capitalization — price times shares outstanding — of roughly $302 billion. That's one-fifteenth the value of Nvidia (NVDA) today. Just counting to a trillion incredibly fast, with no bathroom breaks, would take 32,000 years, according to the Q&A platform Quora.com.

In August 2017, however, I wrote, "It may be a matter of months, or more likely a few years, but sometime soon a U.S. company will breach the trillion-dollar mark." I was more right than I expected.

At the time, I offered estimates of when each would hit a trillion in market cap. Apple (AAPL) was first, as I predicted, but it took just 11 months, a year and a half ahead of schedule. The other four quickly followed: Amazon.com (AMZN) in September 2018; Microsoft (MSFT) in 2019; Alphabet (GOOGL), the former Google, in 2020; and Meta Platforms (META), the former Facebook, in 2021.

At that point, I wrote another column, saying, "I'm doubling down and recommending them all." Sure enough, as a group, they have nearly doubled. (Prices, returns and other data are as of September 30; stocks I like are in bold.)

Today, with the additions of Nvidia, Tesla (TSLA), Broadcom (AVGO) and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), membership in the Trillion-Dollar Club (let's call it TDC) has grown to nine. The combined market cap of these stocks accounts for 41% of the capitalization of all the companies of the S&P 500 Index. A mere 10 years ago, the nine largest U.S. stocks had a total market cap of 18% of the S&P 500.

Today, eight of the nine members of the TDC are technology (or tech-related) stocks, and for the ninth, Berkshire, Apple alone represents one-fifth of assets. By contrast, in 2015, the top nine consisted of just five tech stocks, plus companies in banking, pharmaceuticals and energy, along with Berkshire. In 2005, only two tech companies graced a highly diversified top nine.

Concentrated bets

The top-heavy nature of the S&P 500 today should make any investor worried. The market is betting heavily, not simply on tech but on artificial intelligence. But you will notice from the bold-facing that I still like trillion-dollar stocks — at least the initial cohort.

Why? Let's start with Alphabet. Since 2017, revenues have quadrupled and earnings have quintupled, yet the stock's price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, based on a consensus of analysts' forecasts of profits for the year ahead, has declined from 30 to 25. Analysts at investment research firm Value Line expect earnings will rise an average of 12% annually for the next five years, indicating a perfectly reasonable valuation.

Alphabet owns the global entertainment asset with the greatest potential, YouTube, with nearly 3 billion active users. The company is also sitting on more than $95 billion in cash and has very little debt; it has even started paying a small dividend.

Amazon's P/E has dropped from nearly 200 to 32. It dominates the e-commerce market, accounting for 38% of sales, compared with 6% for number two Walmart (WMT).

Apple's valuation has risen to 33, but it was absurdly low (16) in 2017. The company is a profit machine; it earns about 25 cents on every dollar of sales, and those dollars will exceed 400 billion this year. Microsoft has tripled its earnings since 2017. It has a powerful cloud-computing business and has integrated AI into all its platforms.

Meta gets the least respect. Its forward P/E has fallen from 29 in 2017 to 25, despite net profits rising from $18 billion to close to an estimated $72 billion in 2025. The company, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, recently won its antitrust case, leaving the ownership of its assets intact.

I am less enamored of the TDC newbies. Nvidia was once a lovely choice. In making it one of my 10 stock picks for 2020, I wrote that it "may be the best artificial intelligence play." Since then, its market cap has risen from $122 billion to $4.5 trillion.

Ponder that number. It’s more than the capitalization of all the listed stocks in the U.K. It is greater than the GDP of Japan. Nvidia, with its graphic processing units, has little competition for top-level AI chips used in data centers, but that is going to change. There is too much money to be made.

Broadcom, a semiconductor company with a niche in AI chips called application-specific integrated circuits, which have specialized functions, is the change agent. It became the newest member of the TDC in December 2024 after its stock price increased by a factor of six in four years. Value Line expects earnings to continue rising at a 24.5% annualized clip through 2030.

Broadcom, like Nvidia, does not own manufacturing plants, or "fabs." That allows the company to retain its capital, but it also leaves it vulnerable to supply interruptions. My other worries about the future of the chip business are government intervention, geopolitical threats and a lack of electricity to power data centers in the U.S.; still, it’s hard not to like Broadcom.

Tesla, which reached $1 trillion in market cap in October 2021, then fell out of the club a few times and came back in, looks more attractive now that its CEO is getting back to work. I am especially excited about its battery storage business.

But Tesla is clearly a meme stock, driven by the enthusiasm of fans. Its revenues have been flat for three years, profits are microscopic by TDC standards, and capital spending requirements are huge.

The outlier, Berkshire, has a P/E in the mid-20s and a brilliant CEO in his nineties. I'm loyal to Warren Buffett and confident in his successors. Berkshire has a hoard of liquid assets, and insurance is the best business in America outside of tech.

When I wrote about trillion-dollar stocks in 2021, I warned about "a sort of law of financial gravity." It's not hard to imagine a stock with a market cap of $100 billion becoming a four-bagger (that is, quadrupling in value) or even a 40-bagger, as Nvidia has proven.

But could Nvidia quadruple from its current value? Could Microsoft or Apple, at $3.8 trillion each? It seems doubtful. Still, doubles or triples are satisfying.

The legacy TDC companies have shown a remarkable ability to innovate and adapt. Operating-system software, for example, used to dominate Microsoft's revenues. Now, it represents only about one-tenth of sales. Server and cloud services account for 40% today, with gaming and LinkedIn making significant contributions.

These are truly exceptional businesses with extensive moats and deep human capital. As crazy as it sounds, they deserve to be trillion-dollar companies — and to keep growing.

James K. Glassman chairs Glassman Advisory, a public-affairs consulting firm. He does not write about his clients. His most recent book is Safety Net: The Strategy for De-Risking Your Investments in a Time of Turbulence. Of the stocks mentioned here, he owns Amazon.com. You can reach him at JKGlassman@gmail.com.

Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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When a CEO is in his nineties, you'd think investors wouldn't be caught off guard when he says it's time to hang it up. But Mr. Market seems to be displeased by Warren Buffett's announcement in May that he would hand over the reins at Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) at the end of 2025. (Buffett, who turned 95 on August 30, will remain as chairman.)

Since that day, Berkshire's "B" shares have fallen 12.6% — even as the broader market notched new highs, with the S&P 500 Index returning 11.8%. (Prices and returns are as of July 31, unless otherwise noted.)

You may be wondering if there's an alternative to a post-Buffett Berkshire. A few Berkshire Hathaway clones are on the market — firms with insurance at their core and portfolios of businesses and stocks built for long-term returns. Some funds either explicitly or implicitly follow the Warren Buffett way.

We looked at some of the options below. Fair warning: Replacing Buffett may be as difficult for your portfolio as it is for Berkshire.

Very little of the Berkshire transition was a surprise. Buffett has had stock-picking help for some time from Berkshire execs Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

And Greg Abel, the man Buffett tapped as the next CEO, was first named a potential successor in January 2018. But Abel built his career as an energy executive, not a portfolio builder.

That seems to have spooked Buffett acolytes, who wonder whether Berkshire's magical long-run returns — a compounded 19.9% from 1965 through 2024 — can continue.

"Buffett is able to take his huge balance sheets and turn $1 into $2," says Vitaliy Katsenelson, a money manager and author of The Intellectual Investor. "I don't know how good Greg Abel is."

That sums up the uncertainty. But Buffett boosters suggest shareholders should remain patient.

Christopher Bloomstran, a St. Louis–based money manager, does not believe the stalled stock price "has anything to do with the likelihood that Greg is not going to do a bang-up job. I think he will. I think he's absolutely phenomenal."

Buffett's Canadian counterpart

Though Abel was born in Alberta, the man widely called "the Canadian Warren Buffett" is 75-year-old Prem Watsa, who founded insurer Fairfax Financial (FRFHF) in 1985 and serves as its chairman and CEO.

The stock trades over the counter in the U.S., and on the Toronto Stock Exchange (FFH), accessible via some brokers, including Fidelity, Interactive Brokers and Schwab. In either case, charges may apply.

With a $39 billion market value, Watsa's company has developed a similar — albeit smaller — following to Berkshire's. The Fairfax annual meeting is a multiday affair that attracts value-oriented investors from Canada and other countries.

A fan blog, the Corner of Berkshire & Fairfax, is dedicated to value investing forums and discussion of the similarities between the two companies.

Fairfax's results suggest why: The company's book value per share increased an average 18.7% per year from 1985 to 2024, while the share price increased at an annualized rate of 19.2%.

Watsa may be even more of a bargain hunter than Berkshire, and that has occasionally led to picking losers. Fairfax's portfolio has muddled along for years with a large position in BlackBerry (BB), the mobile-phone pioneer that has struggled to reinvent itself.

Fairfax has had some winners recently, though. A large position in Canadian steelmaker Stelco paid off handsomely when Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) bought the company in 2024. Fairfax's one-third stake in Greece's Eurobank increased in value from $2.3 billion at the end of 2023 to $3.2 billion on March 31.

Stephen Boland, an analyst at brokerage Raymond James, says Fairfax is one of the most diversified insurers, both in the number of countries in which it operates and in the lines of insurance it sells.

The company is "still exposed to California wildfires — it took a big loss for that in 2024 — but it has tended to diversify the business really, really well on the insurance side," says Boland, who recommends the shares.

With what he believes was a "stellar" second quarter for the company's investment portfolio, the stock is his top pick in the Canadian insurance sector. It trades at about 10 times earnings for the year ahead, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Berkshire Hathaway's insurance operations largely target consumers — its Geico subsidiary causes some analysts to categorize Berkshire as an auto insurer.

Markel (MKL), by contrast, is a "specialty insurer," with sophisticated customers. It sells products such as collectible-car insurance, liability policies for corporate boards of directors, and insurance against damage to offshore oil rigs.

Like Fairfax, Markel has encouraged comparisons to Berkshire. For 35 years, the company, headquartered in Virginia, has held a brunch in Omaha on the weekend of the big Buffett bash. More than 2,500 people reportedly attended the 2025 event.

Over the past 38 years, the company's share price has increased at an annualized rate of roughly 15%.

Berkshire stock is the single largest holding in Markel's portfolio, accounting for $1.7 billion worth of assets on March 31 — three times the size of the second-largest position. Alphabet (GOOGL), Brookfield (BN), Deere (DE) and Amazon.com (AMZN) round out the top five, with each position worth about $400 million to $500 million.

Markel's portfolio of stocks, like Berkshire's, accounts for a heavier proportion of assets than for most insurers, which tend to focus on bonds. A separate division, Markel Ventures, holds 100% ownership in 20 companies, many of which are manufacturers.

Analysts say they like Markel in the long run, but a recent spike in the shares, coupled with underwhelming insurance results, has cooled them on its near-term performance.

Activist investor Jana Partners disclosed in December 2024 it had taken a stake in Markel and wanted the company to spin off its ventures unit so that it would be a more attractive takeover target for a conventional insurer.

The Jana news boosted Markel's stock price, and it trades at about 20 times earnings for the year ahead, according to S&P. Just one of seven analysts who cover Markel rate it a Buy.

Given depressed profits, "I think they're trading kind of where they should be now," says analyst Robert Farnam, of investment firm Janney, who has a Hold rating on the shares.

But the stock may have appeal for investors who buy on dips or who have a long enough time horizon. "I consider Markel to be a terrific long-term investment," says Farnam. "This is the type of stock that you basically put into retirement accounts and forget about."

Loews (L) has an insurance company at its core and owns multiple businesses, including hotels and an energy pipeline company, so it, too, has drawn comparisons to Berkshire. But in many ways, Loews is more of a family conglomerate.

Benjamin Tisch, named CEO this year, is the third generation of his family to run the company, a component of the S&P 500, and members of the Tisch family own roughly 20% of the stock.

"Even though Loews is in the 500, there's low investor interest" because of the Tisches' outsize stake, says Catherine Seifert, an analyst with CFRA who stopped covering the company more than two years ago. "And they're not as diversified as Berkshire anyway. Honestly, if you want to replicate Berkshire, you're probably better off doing it with a series of exchange-traded funds."

Following Buffett's path

There are a handful of ETFs that explicitly follow Berkshire; but with the Buffett premium seemingly dissipating at Berkshire, you might be better off looking for other funds that incorporate Buffett-esque investing principles, such those focused on companies that enjoy wide "moats," says Aniket Ullal, head of ETF research and analytics at CFRA.

When Buffett explains his desire to invest in businesses with a long-term competitive advantage, he has long used the word moat, as in a waterway that surrounded castles of the Middle Ages.

A moat keeps potential competitors away from your business — in economic terms, it's called a barrier to entry. Berkshire's wholly owned subsidiary BNSF Railway, for example, has a moat: Only four major railroad companies remain in the U.S., and the probability that a new one will try to lay thousands of miles of track to compete is nearly zero.

The largest and oldest moat ETF is the VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat ETF (MOAT), which tracks the Morningstar Wide Moat Focus Index. The 52 companies in the index as of May 31 were the cheapest of what Morningstar considers wide-moat stocks, based on their discount to the research firm's estimate of their fair value.

The ETF's top three holdings at last report were Estée Lauder (EL), military shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) and Allegion (ALLE), an industrial security firm.

Compared with similar funds, the portfolio is overweight in health care and consumer staples stocks and has less invested in consumer discretionary and financial services names, according to Morningstar.

In a market that has seen years of exuberance for high-growth names, however, the fund's philosophy has had a mixed track record. It returned 7.5% over the past 12 months, compared with 16.3% for the S&P 500.

Four times in the past decade, it has been in the top 6% of its fund category (U.S. large-company stocks with a blend of growth and value characteristics). But it had a poor 2024, ranking in the bottom 5%. The fund's expense ratio is 0.47%.

Another approach is to zero in on funds that focus on metrics that typically point to the kind of high-quality companies that Buffett favors.

We prefer the JPMorgan U.S. Quality Factor ETF (JQUA), a member of the Kiplinger ETF 20, the list of our favorite exchange-traded funds. The fund tracks an index that sifts for companies that meet 10 criteria, including measures of profitability such as strong earnings and cash flow; financial risk (low debt, high interest coverage, low share-price volatility); and earnings quality (consistent accounting practices).

It has returned 13.6% over the past 12 months, and its 0.12% expense ratio makes it one of the cheapest funds of its kind. Top sectors are technology, financial services and consumer discretionary stocks. Nvidia (NVDA) was the fund's top holding at last report. Berkshire Hathaway places in the fund's top 10.

Then again, perhaps you should follow Buffett's own investment advice for individual investors. In 1994, he told shareholders that by "periodically investing in an index fund, a know-nothing investor can actually outperform most investment professionals."

At Berkshire's 2020 annual meeting, he elaborated: "In my view, for most people, the best thing to do is to own the S&P 500 index fund. People will try to sell you other things because there's more money in it if they do." He has specifically suggested the low-cost Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), with an expense ratio of 0.03%.

Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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Stocks were choppy Thursday as the government shutdown continued for a second straight day, with no sign of resolution in sight. Still, the three main indexes managed new record closing highs thanks to strength in the technology sector.

At the close, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up 0.4% to 22,844, the broader S&P 500 had gained 0.06% to 6,715, and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.2% higher at 46,519.

Technology was one of just three S&P 500 sectors that advanced Thursday, with its gains supported by several mega-cap semiconductor stocks. On Wednesday, OpenAI said it inked deals with South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to secure chips and build data centers for the ChatGPT parent's Stargate project.

Nvidia (NVDA), for one, added 0.9%, which made it one of the best-performing Dow Jones stocks. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) jumped 3.5%, while Broadcom (AVGO) added 1.4%.

Berkshire buys OxyChem for $9.7 billion

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) said Thursday that it will buy OxyChem, Occidental Petroleum's (OXY) petrochemical segment, for $9.7 billion in cash.

This marks Berkshire's largest acquisition since 2022, when it bought insurance firm Alleghany for $11.6 billion, and could be the last for Warren Buffett before he retires as CEO of the holding company at year's end.

Berkshire already has substantial exposure to Occidental Petroleum. Indeed, OXY was the seventh-largest position in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio at the end of Q2, with Buffett & Co. owning roughly 265 million shares. BRK.B also holds preferred shares of the energy firm, as well as warrants to purchase common stock.

BRK.B stock slipped 0.5% on the news, while OXY plunged 7.3%.

The government shutdown continues

Wall Street received no encouraging news on the shutdown Thursday. U.S. Senators are on break today in observance of Yom Kippur. The soonest a funding bill could be voted on is tomorrow.

Prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket show traders are anticipating the shutdown dragging on for another two weeks or so, which could put a dent in economic growth.

"On average, real quarterly GDP growth has increased 2.2% during periods of government shutdowns and risen over the past six government shutdowns, indicating a limited economic spillover." says Monica Guerra, head of U.S. Policy at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

But Guerra adds that "economic effects could be magnified this time" considering it is a full shutdown vs a partial one. Additionally, "federal job cuts could be higher than usual."

Private economic data underscores a weak labor market

The delay of economic data due to the shutdown is a pressing issue for Wall Street – especially with a key Federal Reserve meeting on the horizon.

For those wondering, the next Fed meeting, scheduled for October 28-29, will still proceed as planned, even if the shutdown continues through the end of the month. The Fed is an independent agency and is not impacted by the lapse in funding.

But, "the suspension of economic statistical releases will make it harder to track the state of the economy during the shutdown," says Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. "That may cause financial markets to react more than usual to private data releases."

Today, that data included a report from executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which showed that U.S.-based employers cut 54,064 jobs in September. This was down 37% from August and 26% from the year prior.

"Right now, we're dealing with a stagnating labor market, cost increases, and a transformative new technology," says Andy Challenger, senior vice president and labor expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "With rate cuts on the way, we may see some stabilizing in the job market in the fourth quarter, but other factors could keep employers planning layoffs or holding off hiring."

Tomorrow's economic calendar will not feature the September nonfarm payrolls report, as initially expected, due to the shutdown. Market participants will still see the Institute for Supply Management's Services Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) and S&P Global's Services PMI, and hear from a pair of Fed speakers.

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The market cap of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) is about $1 trillion.

Its equity portfolio – concentrated in blue chip stocks Apple (AAPL), American Express (AXP), Coca-Cola (KO), Bank of America (BAC) and Chevron (CVX) – is worth about $250 billion. Subtract Berkshire's cash and cash equivalents of about $350 billion and that means the core operations' contribution to Berkshire's market value comes to about $600 billion.

This is a rough way of looking at Berkshire, but it goes to the point of Buffett being a master capital allocator. The company's market value reflects more than $600 billion in operating businesses, $250 billion in equities and another $350 billion in cash.

In other words, there's a lot more to Buffett's incredible success with Berkshire than his stock-picking acumen. Rather, it was due to how Buffett chose to allocate capital over decades. He was always focused on value rather than price, and, by extension, on the opportunity cost of those allocation decisions.

For example: Buffett loves collecting dividends but Berkshire famously doesn't pay one itself. And why should it? If you invest in Berkshire Hathaway, you're telling Buffett to invest your money for you.

In effect, you're trusting Buffett to generate a better return on your capital than whatever yield the BRK.B dividend would pay. Why settle for, say, a 2% yield when Buffett has shown that he will deliver more than 2% if you let him steward the cash earmarked for dividends instead?

The bottom line is that over the past six decades, Buffett – through acquisitions, investments and opportunistic ventures – did something that's unlikely to ever be repeated. He essentially doubled the performance of the broader market.

Indeed, since 1965, Berkshire stock has generated a compound annual growth rate of almost 20%. Over the same span, the S&P 500, with dividends reinvested, delivered a compound annual growth rate of 10%.

What that meant for anyone lucky enough to get in on the ground floor with Buffett has been nothing less than astonishing. If you invested $1,000 in Berkshire stock in 1965, it would today be worth about $33 million.

The same sum invested in the S&P 500 would be worth about $336,000 today.

They say records are meant to be broken, and perhaps one day another capital allocator will surpass Warren Buffett. But it's hard to see how.

With that in mind, we've gathered some of Buffett's words of wisdom he's shared over the years. These quotes are gleaned from Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters and are advice that all investors should live by.

1. Only in America. "Berkshire would not have achieved its results in any locale except America whereas America would have been every bit the success it has been if Berkshire had never existed. … So thank you, Uncle Sam."

2. Admit mistakes. "During the 2019-23 period, I have used the words 'mistake' or 'error' 16 times in my letters to you. Many other huge companies have never used either word over that span."

3. Cost matters. "Performance comes, performance goes. Fees never falter."

4. Seize opportunities. "Every decade or so, dark clouds will fill the economic skies, and they will briefly rain gold. When downpours of that sort occur, it's imperative that we rush outdoors carrying washtubs, not teaspoons."

5. Avoid the herd. "If investors insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful."

6. Prepare for difficult times. "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out."

7. Think long-term. "If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes."

8. Value investing. "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

9. Invest like an owner. "We view ourselves as business analysts – not as market analysts, macro-economic analysts or even security analysts."

Note: The compilation of Warren Buffett's quotes first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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Warren Buffett is known as the greatest long-term investor of all time, but that kind of gives him short shrift. When the Oracle of Omaha steps down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) at the end of 2025, it will mark the end of the career of the greatest capital allocator of all time.

What's the difference? Market participants who pore over which stocks Buffett is buying and selling every quarter forget that Berkshire is essentially a conglomerate with massive insurance operations at its core.

That's not to denigrate Buffett and his late partner Charlie Munger's stock-picking skills. They are legendary. But the company's equity holdings are just a part of Berkshire stock's incomparable run over the past 60 years.

Recall that Berkshire Hathaway was a struggling textile firm when Buffett took control in 1965. Over the ensuing years, Buffett converted it into a holding company, or a company that buys other companies.

Buffett's first target was an insurance company, and the insurance business continues to be at the core of its operations today.

The insurance business was especially attractive to Buffett because of float, or the money insurance companies hold between collecting premiums and paying out claims.

Thanks to the float from Berkshire's insurance companies, Buffett had a source of permanent capital to go shopping for other businesses and equities.

The end result is a sprawling set of wholly owned subsidiaries that collectively represent an endlessly optimistic bet on the dynamism of the U.S. economy.

Geico insurance is perhaps the crown jewel of Berkshire's businesses, but more than 60 other companies also contribute to its bottom line.

Plenty of folks might know that BNSF Railway, industrial titan Precision Castparts and Duracell are among Berkshire's businesses. But let's not forget about smaller operations such as Dairy Queen, Froot of the Loom, See's Candies and the wonderfully named Acme Brick Company.

Below, we feature some of Berkshire's high- and lowlights over the past six decades.

1965: Buffett takes control of struggling textile manufacturer Berkshire Hathaway – ironically, a purchase he would later deem "my first mistake."

1967: Berkshire Hathaway pays a dividend of 10 cents a share – the first and only dividend the company has ever paid.

1976: Buffett buys 1 million shares in insurance company Geico at about $2 per share. The stock had traded at $61 per share in 1972. Buffett first bought shares in 1951; Geico became a wholly owned Berkshire subsidiary in 1996.

1988: Berkshire starts buying Coca-Cola (KO), purchasing a 7% stake in the consumer staples stock for just over $1 billion. Today, Coke is Berkshire's third-largest holding, worth some $26.6 billion.

1993: Buffett buys Dexter Shoe for $433 million in Berkshire stock. Not only does the business eventually fail, but the shares paid would today be worth roughly $19 billion.

1996: Berkshire issues Class B shares, priced at $23.20, or one-thirtieth of the Class A shares. The B shares traded at $504 in May, up more than 2,000%.

2010: Berkshire makes the largest business acquisition in the company's history, buying Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway for $44 billion.

2016: Buffett starts buying stock in Apple (AAPL), overcoming an aversion to tech stocks when he realizes – after noticing customers in line at a local Dairy Queen absorbed in their iPhones – that Apple is also a consumer products company.

2025: Buffett announces his retirement at the end of the year, "setting a gold standard for how corporate succession should be planned and implemented," says David Kass, a finance professor at the University of Maryland.

Note: The timeline of Berkshire's high- and lowlights first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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UnitedHealth Group (UNH) is soaring out of the gate Friday after regulatory filings revealed Warren Buffett's holding company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), initiated a stake in the beaten-down Dow Jones stock in the second quarter.

According to WhaleWisdom, Warren Buffett's holding company bought a little more than 5 million UNH shares between April 1 and June 30, accounting for 0.6% of the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio and making it the 18th-largest position.

The stake was worth a market value of $1.6 billion at the end of Q2.

Why did Buffett buy UnitedHealth stock?

It's been a rough stretch for UnitedHealth – both on and off the price charts. The country's largest health insurer has struggled with rising Medicare costs and a Department of Justice investigation into its billing practices.

The company also announced in May that its CEO, Andrew Witty, was stepping down. And in July, it gave a full-year outlook that came in well below what Wall Street was expecting.

"When we prepared our 2025 Medicare Advantage offerings back in the first half of 2024, we significantly underestimated the accelerating medical trend and did not modify benefits or plan offerings sufficiently to offset the pressures we are now experiencing," said UnitedHealthcare CEO Tim Noel on the company's earnings call.

And its share price has plummeted as a result. In the past 12 months, UNH shares have plunged 52%. And they're down 46% for the year to date through April 14 – making UnitedHealth the worst Dow Jones stock of 2025 so far.

And this may explain why UnitedHealth was one of the stocks Buffett bought in Q2. Following its recent slump, UNH's forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is now at 16.5 – below both its five-year average of 19.2, according to Morningstar, and the S&P 500's forward P/E ratio of 23.3.

And if there's one thing Warren Buffett loves, it's a bargain. Also working in UnitedHealth's favor is its fat 3.3% dividend yield, which, at the moment, is more than double the yield on the S&P 500.

Does this make UNH stock a buy?

Buffett & Co. are not the only ones on Wall Street that have signaled their confidence in the embattled blue chip stock.

Of the 26 analysts covering UnitedHealth Group who are tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 13 say it's a Strong Buy, six call it a Buy, five have it at Hold and two rate it a Strong Sell. This works out to a consensus Buy recommendation.

Meanwhile, the average price target of $327.29 represents implied upside of more than 20% over the next 12 months or so. And the Street's loftiest target price on UNH of $626 is more than two times higher than the stock's current price.

Truist Securities analyst David MacDonald is one of those with a Buy rating on UNH.

"The company has several initiatives underway to drive improvement across segments," MacDonald wrote in a July 31 note, adding that he sees "opportunity around value-based care and broader margin improvement aided by further leveraging [of] automation/AI over time."

The analyst adds that "long-term execution" is key and that UnitedHealth Group's cash flow "should help drive balanced ongoing capital deployment while supporting corrective actions and investment in core capabilities and technology/efficiency."

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In early May 2025, Warren Buffett announced his plan to retire as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), the struggling textile company he took over in 1965 and transformed into a sprawling conglomerate (189 subsidiaries) and a legendary investment vehicle (stock in 40 companies worth nearly $280 billion in the first quarter, according to CNBC, plus some $348 billion in cash).

Come year-end, Buffett, who turns 95 in August, hands the reins to Greg Abel, 63, who joined Berkshire in 1999 when it acquired a controlling interest in MidAmerican Energy, an Iowa utility.

Buffett isn't disappearing. He'll remain chairman of the board, and he told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm not going to sit at home and watch soap operas."

We know Kiplinger readers revere Warren Buffett, so we couldn't let him go without a bit of a send-off.

It's difficult to overstate Buffett's influence on the business and investing worlds, says David Kass, a finance professor at the University of Maryland, who recalls how gracious – and funny – the man known as the Oracle of Omaha could be to the occasional groups of students Kass would bring to meet him.

"Many portfolio managers will tell you that everyone makes mistakes, and that if you get it right 50% of the time, then you succeed," says Kass. "In the case of Buffett, he's right over 90% of the time. That differentiates him from everyone else."

Buffett is a master communicator, and at times, he has been an elder statesman. His op-ed in the New York Times in October 2008, during the depths of the Great Financial Crisis, just weeks after Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, was Churchillian, as he encouraged frightened investors to "Buy American" and to "Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful."

His annual letters to shareholders are gems of transparency and accessibility (no finance degree necessary!), sprinkled with a folksy humor that makes them must-reading for all investors, not just Berkshire's.

But perhaps Buffett's most important legacy, says Kass, beyond his personal qualities of honesty, integrity and transparency, is the example he set for how to be a long-term investor: patient, impervious to market swings, with an ideal holding period of "forever."

And indeed, as Buffett told the Journal, he hopes his equanimity will continue to stand Berkshire in good stead: "I will be useful here if there's a panic in the market, because I don't get fearful when things go down in price or everybody else gets scared."

Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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All three major U.S. equity indexes gapped up at the open and climbed through Tuesday's trading session after the government said inflation wasn't as hot as expected in July. All 11 sectors were higher amid a broad rally also fueled by another extension of President Donald Trump's deadline for an agreement with China on tariffs.

Communication services, technology and financials led the way higher, with utilities and real estate turning from red to green late in the session. President Trump has extended by 90 days (until November 10) a deadline to reach a new trade agreement with China. And earnings news continues to be generally positive.

But today was all about incoming economic data and the July CPI report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the Consumer Price Index increased by 0.2% month-over-month and 2.7% year-over-year in July, a little less hot than Wall Street expected and sufficient to spark 1%-plus gains for all three of the major indexes.

BlackRock Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income Rick Rieder notes underlying strength in July CPI numbers but remains "heartened by the trajectory" of some core inflation areas running at lower levels compared to the recent past.

"These pieces of data are critical for a Federal Reserve that appears to be in a more immediate transition to a lower fed funds policy rate," Rieder writes. "We expect the Fed to begin cutting rates in September, and it could be justified cutting the funds rate by 50 basis points."

Indeed, the CME Group's FedWatch Tool now shows a 94.2% probability the Fed will cut interest rates by 25 basis points following the September 16-17 FOMC meeting. But that's not 100%.

And, according to Comerica Bank Chief Economist Bill Adams, "The Fed will likely see the July CPI report as a pebble on the scales against a rate cut in September." Adams emphasizes "hot" increases in core services prices, which the Fed "believes … are a better metric of inflation's trend than goods prices."

Adams concedes "tariffs have had limited effects on inflation so far" but notes the "up one day, down the next, then up even more the day after" means it's too early to assess the ultimate impact on prices.

"The CPI report is an argument against a cut in September," Adams concludes. The economist expects the Fed to maintain a target range of 4.25% to 4.50% for the federal funds rate, "but it's a close call. Another downside surprise from jobs data could easily tip the Fed's balance of opinion toward a cut."

Fed funds futures pricing currently shows a 0.0% probability of a 50-basis-point move in September. Next up on the economic calendar are a couple of Fed speakers on Wednesday as well as the Producer Price Index (PPI) for July and weekly jobless claims on Thursday.

But the most important numbers, as Adams acknowledges, won't come until the BLS releases the August jobs report on Friday, September 5.

Make the nuclear revolution

Oklo (OKLO, +9.2%), one way to invest in the nuclear revolution, reported a second-quarter loss of 18 cents per share, an improvement from a loss of 27 cents a year ago but worse than a consensus forecast for a loss of 11 cents.

In its earnings announcement, Oklo noted it's "uniquely positioned to benefit" from the Trump administration's executive orders on nuclear energy. The Financial Times reports that multiple special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are angling for some federally stimulated fission-and-fusion-reaction action as well.

According to the FT: "Three nuclear energy developers are seeking to raise more than $500 million through mergers with special purpose acquisition companies as investors rush to tap into an atomic energy boom."

Jamie Smyth and George Steer report that Terra Innovatum, Terrestrial Energy and Eagle Energy Metals expect to complete transactions designed to "accelerate the development of small modular reactors" by the end of 2025.

IPOs are hot

The FT also reports that Holtec International and Quantum Leap Energy, a unit of ASP Isotopes, are among several development-stage nuclear companies with plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in the near future amid a welcoming market environment.

CoreWeave (CRWV, +6.4%), which completed its IPO March 28, extended an already impressive performance ahead of its post-closing bell earnings report. CoreWeave beat expectations when it reported its first set of quarterly results in May.

According to FactSet, Wall Street expects the AI cloud platform to report a loss of 23 cents per share on revenue of $1.08 billion. CRWV stock is up 249.4% since its IPO.

Another recent IPO, Figma (FIG, +6.2%), is still soaring after its July 31 stock market debut, as many investors appear to be answering the question "should you buy FIG stock?" in the affirmative.

M&A is hot too

Meanwhile, old-school consumer discretionary stock Hanesbrands (HBI, +27.9%) jumped like it's the Michael Jordan days again on a separate FT report that Gildan Activewear (GIL, -3.6%) "is nearing a deal" to acquire the underwear-maker for $5 billion.

A deal among textile firms would bear at least historic resemblance to the tie-up between Union Pacific (UNP, -0.5%) and Norfolk Southern (NSC, -0.2%) announced July 29. That merger could potentially establish, at long last, a real transcontinental railroad.

Meanwhile, UNP's acquisition of NSC has also stirred talk of Warren Buffett making his own old-world M&A move through railroad company BNSF and deploying some of the cash on the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, +1.3%) balance sheet to buy CSX (CSX, +1.7%).

By Tuesday's closing bell, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average had added 1.1% to 44,458. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up 1.4% to 21,681, and the broad-based S&P 500 Index had risen 1.1% to 6,445.

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Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) was once again a net seller of stocks in its most recent quarter. But if you think Warren Buffett, who will step down as CEO at the end of 2025, has caught the "AI is a bubble" bug, think again.

The Oracle of Omaha has been easing off equities and hoarding cash for quite a while. In the past three years, Berkshire was a net seller of stocks to the tune of $190 billion. Also noteworthy is that Berkshire hasn't engaged in stock buybacks since May 2024.

As a result, Buffett is running a sort of "barbell" portfolio. Berkshire, with a market cap of more than $1 trillion, holds $280 billion in stocks and a whopping $380 billion in cash.

Berkshire's cash pile has been boosted by comparatively high short-term interest rates, as well from pruning its portfolio. Buffett once again pared BRK.B's stakes in major long-term holdings such as Apple (AAPL), Bank of America (BAC) in the most recent quarter.

The Apple sales are particularly noteworthy. Not too long ago, the iPhone maker accounted for roughly 40% of Berkshire U.S. equity portfolio. Today, it's closer to 23%.

For some folks, these are highly disquieting developments. When one of the greatest investors of all time is selling massive amounts of stock in some of his favorite names, it's understandable if people believe they would feel better about it if only they knew why.

First things first, however. Buffett took pains to explain to Berkshire shareholders at their annual meeting in May that the iPhone maker is still, er, the Apple of his eye. (It would have been embarrassing not to, considering Apple CEO Tim Cook attended the event in person.)

If Buffett has a problem with AAPL, it's that the value of Berkshire's stake has grown tremendously at a time when he expects corporate tax rates to rise, probably sometime in the not-too-distant future.

As Buffett told the Berkshire faithful in August 2024: "If I'm looking at a 21% rate this year and then we're [paying] a lot higher percentage later on, I don't think you'll actually mind the fact later on that we sold a little Apple this year."

Perhaps the same thinking informed Berkshire's paring of its stake in Bank of America. The fact that owning more than 10% of a publicly traded company's shares triggers disclosure requirements large shareholders would rather avoid for as long as possible is another reason to bring one's ownership below a regulatory threshold.

What we know is that Buffett has been a net seller of equities for 12 consecutive quarters. Share repurchases have ground to a halt, too. For context, Berkshire repurchased more than $9 billion worth of BRK.B stock in all of 2023.

This is not the sort of behavior one typically sees in someone with excessive confidence in equity prices.

What gives?

Buffett stocks sales: An expert's take

If Warren Buffett is selling stocks and not buying back his own, that might tell us something about the Oracle of Omaha's view of the market, writes Nicholas Colas, co-founder with Jessica Rabe of DataTrek Research.

As a multidecade market watcher and market participant, Colas posits three potential explanations for Buffett's "unusual activity."

The first explanation is that Buffett is calling a top. "Buffett sees stocks as overvalued, including his own, and therefore susceptible to a deep correction or outright bear market," Colas writes.

It's interesting that Berkshire holds $380 billion in cash. "That’s a lot of firepower if markets see a sustained drop," notes Colas. "While Berkshire is not especially expensive, its multiple may be worrisome to a value investor."

Don't forget that Buffett likes nothing more than to be greedy when others are fearful. If stocks crash, Berkshire will be able to go shopping for assets at deep discount prices.

M&A on tap

Then there's the possibility that Berkshire is amassing cash to effect a truly whale-sized deal. "Berkshire may have identified one or more large acquisitions and is raising capital for those purchases," Colas writes. He adds that BRK.B's $380 billion in cash would comfortably buy all of Coca-Cola (KO) or Goldman Sachs (GS).

Colas emphasizes that the latter two are only examples, not risk arbitrage trading ideas. They do make sense, however. Coca-Cola, a Buy-rated Dow Jones stock, has been a core Berkshire holding for four decades.

As for Goldman Sachs, Berkshire has been a major shareholder in the past. (Recall that Buffett gave GS an injection of capital during the Great Financial Crisis.)

Passing the baton

Lastly, Colas postulates that it's possible Buffett is simply preparing the company for his departure as CEO. (He will stay on as chairman.)

Perhaps Buffett "wants to clear the decks for his successors to remake Berkshire's portfolio and rethink the company's stock repurchase program," Colas says.

"At 95 years old, he has certainly earned the right to ride off into the sunset as one of the greatest investors of all time."

The bottom line

The most important takeaway from Colas' note: "We wouldn't read too much into Buffett's latest moves since there is more than one logical explanation for his actions."

Let's pause on that for a moment, because it's important. As folks have noted before, if copying Warren Buffett's buys and sells was all it took to become the next Warren Buffett, there would be a lot more Warren Buffetts in the world.

As far as we know, there is still only one.

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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) initiated small positions in Ulta Beauty (ULTA) and Heico (HEI) in the second quarter, bought more Chubb (CB), pared stakes in eight names – most notably, Apple (AAPL) and Chevron (CVX) – and exited bets on Paramount (PARA) and Snowflake (SNOW).

There were other moves, as well, but the biggest news to come out of Berkshire's latest regulatory filing was already known. Buffett slashed Berkshire's stake in Apple by almost half. As previously reported, the holding company also reduced its exposure to top holdings such as Chevron and Bank of America (BAC).

Keep in mind that Buffett told Berkshire shareholders that the Apple sales were done for tax purposes, as he expects corporate tax rates to rise sometime in the not-too-distant future. The same thinking could apply to BRK.B's other sales, but then it's not unusual for Buffett to be a net seller of equities when stocks are trading at record levels.

All told, Berkshire sold roughly $77 billion in equities in Q2 – mostly Apple – and purchased less than $2 billion. At any rate, with exactly 400 million Apple shares still in the portfolio, Buffett would appear to be done selling his favorite stock.

Earlier this year, the greatest long-term investor of all time said AAPL is "even better" than American Express (AXP) or Coca-Cola (KO), two "wonderful" businesses that Berkshire has owned since the early 1960s and late 1980s, respectively.

Perhaps it's a coincidence, but Berkshire now holds 400 million AAPL shares – or the exact same number of shares it has held in KO for decades. 

Before we detail Berkshire's quarterly buys and sells, it's important to know that Buffett has always maintained a highly concentrated portfolio. The top five holdings account for almost three-quarters of its U.S. equities portfolio value, while the top 10 account for more than 90%. 

As Buffett likes to say, diversification is for people who don't know what they're doing.

Stocks Warren Buffett is buying

Berkshire picked up two new stocks in Q2: Ulta Beauty and Heico. Berkshire bought 690,000 shares of Ulta Beauty worth $266 million at the end of the Q2. With a weight of 0.1% in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, or its 30th largest position, the cosmetics retail chain won't be moving the needle much on Berkshire's returns.

Meanwhile, with a weight of just 0.07%, Heico is even less material. Berkshire accumulated a little more than 1 million shares in the supplier to the aerospace industry. The stake was worth $185 million as of the end of Q2. 

The comparatively small size of the purchases could mean they were initiated by Buffett's co-portfolio managers Ted Weschler or Todd Combs.

On the other hand, one of the largest additions Berkshire made in Q2 was probably the work of Buffett himself. As previously disclosed, BRK.B bought another 7 million shares in Occidental Petroleum (OXY). (Buffett has added to OXY on weakness in the past.) The holding company owned 255 million shares worth $16 billion at the end of the quarter. At 5.8% of its portfolio, OXY is Berkshire's sixth largest holding.

In another interesting move, Buffett also added to Chubb, the insurance company Berkshire first picked up just a quarter ago. The holding company increased its stake by 4.3%, or more than 1 million shares. With roughly 27 million shares worth $6.9 billion at quarter's end, Chubb accounts for a hefty 2.5% of the portfolio, or Berkshire's ninth largest holding.

Elsewhere, Berkshire fiddled with some of its smallest positions, upping its bets on rather immaterial holdings such as Liberty Sirius XM Group, Series C (LSXMK) and Liberty Sirius XM Group, Series A (LSXMA). Note that the company cut its stakes in the tracking stocks last quarter. Berkshire also bought more Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI) – a position it reduced in Q1.

Stocks Warren Buffett is selling

As noted above, Apple accounted for almost all of Berkshire's Q2 sales. Other reductions included Chevron, a Buy-rated Dow Jones stock, which Buffett first purchased four years ago. In Q2, Berkshire cut CVX by 3.6%, or 4.4 million shares. With 119 million shares worth $18.6 billion at the end of the quarter, the integrated oil major is Berkshire's fifth largest holding.

Other sales included a more than 20% reduction in Capital One Financial (COF). Berkshire sold 2.7 million shares in the financial services company in Q2, bringing its position down to 9.8 million shares worth $1.4 billion. With a 0.49% weight in the portfolio, COF is Berkshire's 19th largest bet. 

Berkshire also continued to clean and prune a number of its mid-level equity holdings, paring its stakes in T-Mobile US (TMUS), Louisiana Pacific (LPX), Liberty Media (LLYVK), Liberty Media (LLYVA) and specialty retailer Floor & Decor (FND).

Buffett also closed out its stake in Paramount, dumping all 7.5 million shares. The company first bought PARA in early 2022. It didn't work out.

Lastly, Berkshire exited its position in Snowflake (SNOW), which is believed to have been the work of subaltern Todd Combs. Berkshire made a rare bet on an initial public offering (IPO) with Snowflake in the third quarter of 2020. SNOW has an all-time total return of negative 16%.

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Apple (AAPL) stock declined in an up market Monday after Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) disclosed it cut its stake by 13% in the most recent quarter. 

Is Warren Buffett, Berkshire's chairman and CEO, losing faith in what is by far the company's largest holding?

Not at all.

Buffett took pains to explain to Berkshire shareholders at their annual meeting in Omaha on Saturday that the iPhone maker is still, er, the Apple of his eye. (It would have been embarrassing not to, considering Apple CEO Tim Cook attended the event in person.) 

For the record, the greatest long-term investor of all time said that AAPL is "even better" than American Express (AXP) or Coca-Cola (KO), two "wonderful" businesses that Berkshire has owned since the early 1960s and late 1980s, respectively.

Indeed, during the question and answer portion of the meeting, Buffett was asked: "[Has your] view of the economics of Apple business or its attractiveness as an investment changed since Berkshire first invested in 2016?"

Buffett: "No. But we have sold some shares."

Why? Because corporate taxes are "likely" to go up "later." He figures the federal government – at some unknown future date – will have to raise taxes to reduce the deficit. 

"With current fiscal policies, I think something has to give," said Buffett. "I think that higher taxes are quite likely."

That's not exactly a heretical idea, regardless of your policy preferences or political inclinations. It's also kind of irrelevant. Buffett is a steward of other people's capital. It's his job to maximize their returns. 

"If I'm looking at a 21% rate this year and then we're [paying] a lot higher percentage later on, I don't think you'll actually mind the fact later on that we sold a little Apple this year," Buffett said.

He noted that Berkshire's corporate tax rate was 35% just a few years ago. Back in the late 1960s, it was more than 50%.

Buffett on paying taxes

Mind you, Buffett is no tax dodger. Here are some of the things he said about taxes when explaining the Apple stock sales:

• "Almost everybody I know pays a lot more attention to not paying taxes than I think they should."
• "We don't mind paying taxes at Berkshire."
• "We at Berkshire always hope to pay substantial federal income taxes. We think it's appropriate [to pay taxes] to a country that's been as generous to our owners. It doesn't bother me in the least to write that check. I would really hope that with all that America has done for all of [Berkshire shareholders], it shouldn't bother you that we do it."

The bottom line is that Berkshire doesn't mind paying taxes. But if they're going to go up, better to pay them at a lower rate today than a higher rate tomorrow. 

Apple by the numbers

Apple is still Berkshire Hathaway's largest holding.

At one point last year AAPL accounted for about half of the holding company's U.S. stock portfolio. However, with 790 million shares (down from 905 million at the end of 2023), Apple is now somewhere in the lower-to-mid-40% range.

That's a hefty allocation, but then Berkshire has always maintained a highly concentrated portfolio. Including its positions in Japanese brokerages, Berkshire's top five holdings – AAPL, Bank of America (BAC), AXP, KO and Chevron (CVX) – comprise about 75% of its equity portfolio.

We won't know the exact breakdown of Berkshire's holdings until it files its Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission after the market closes on May 15.

Whatever the filing reveals, Apple bulls needn't fret about Berkshire Hathaway losing its taste for Apple.

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Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) at the end of 2025, and although he remains chairman, the holding company's stock portfolio is under new management.

Buffett always handled the largest positions in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, but those days are no more. The greatest long-term investor of all time still keeps his hand in and plays a key advisory role. Investment manager Ted Weschler also continues to manage perhaps 5% of Berkshire's stock investments.

But there's no question that CEO Greg Abel is now calling the shots.

In the first quarter of 2026, Abel reduced or closed out positions in 22 names, many of them thought to be picks by former investment manager Todd Combs, who decamped to JPMorgan Chase (JPM) at the end of last year.

The overhaul shouldn't come as a shock. After all, Berkshire's portfolio has been changing dramatically for years now. Although old-guard favorites such as American Express (AXP) and Coca-Cola (KO) still form the core of the portfolio, Buffett & Co. have taken a shine to names such as Apple (AAPL), most recently, Alphabet (GOOGL).

One thing that hasn't changed, however, is Buffett's preference for maintaining a highly concentrated portfolio.

Excluding the company's Japanese brokerage stocks and other overseas equities, Apple alone accounts for more than a fifth of Berkshire's U.S. stock portfolio, according to data from WhaleWisdom. (That's down from more than 40% at its peak.)

Furthermore, Berkshire's top five U.S. equity holdings comprise about 67% of its portfolio value, while the top 10 account for 90%.

As Buffett likes to say, diversification is for those who don't know what they're doing.

Regardless, whether we're talking about Berkshire's biggest bets or the scores of stocks it maintains at the margins, Buffett's focus shifted after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Berkshire used to see value in a host of big bank stocks. Today, the holding company is far more selective. Healthcare stocks and payments processors were a long-time Buffett bet. But not anymore.

If you want to know which stocks Berkshire is buying and selling, look no further than our portfolio analysis.

Price, share totals and other data as of March 31, 2026. Sources: Berkshire Hathaway's SEC Form 13F filed May 15, 2026, for the reporting period ended March 31, 2026; and WhaleWisdom.

The Berkshire Hathaway portfolio

Stocks Berkshire is buying

Buffett famously avoided airlines for decades. When he finally did come around, his timing was terrible, spreading his bets among a handful of major carriers not too long before COVID-19 set the industry into a tailspin. As a result, he quickly closed out those positions.

So it's a mark of change that Berkshire initiated a stake in Delta Air Lines in Q1, buying 39.8 million shares worth $2.6 billion. With a portfolio weight of a bit more than 1%, the air carrier is Berkshire's 14th-largest holding.

As noted above, Berkshire also made a bet on the consumer discretionary sector, picking up 3 million shares in Macy's. The tiny position in the department store operator was worth $55 million as of the end of Q1. At less than 0.1% of the portfolio, M stock is Berkshire's 27th-largest investment.

More interestingly, Berkshire more than tripled its stake in Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL). The holding company now owns 54 million shares worth $15.6 billion as of the end of Q1. With a weight of 5.9%, the Google parent's Class A shares are Berkshire's 7th-largest U.S. equity holding. Berkshire first bought GOOGL in the third quarter of 2025.

Relatedly, Berkshire initiated a stake in Alphabet Class C (GOOG) stock, picking up 3.6 million shares during the first three months of the year. With a value of $1 billion, the Class C investment accounts for Berkshire's 19th-largest holding.

In another vote of confidence in an existing position, Berkshire tripled its holdings of The New York Times Co. (NYT), adding another 10 million shares during Q1. With a market value of $1.3 billion, or 0.5% of the portfolio, NYT is Berkshire's 17th-largest investment — up from 30th place when it first bought the stock at the end of 2025.

Berkshire also added to homebuilder Lennar (LEN), an investment Berkshire initiated last year. The holding company bought another 3 million shares to bring its total stake to 10 million. With a market value of $877 million, LEN accounts for 0.3% of the portfolio, or the 21st-largest investment. Berkshire picked up more Lennar Class B (LEN.B) stock, as well. However, at less than 0.1% of the portfolio, it's essentially immaterial to a company of Berkshire's size.

Stocks Berkshire is selling

Berkshire reversed course on Chevron (CVX) in Q1, cutting its position in the integrated oil major by 35%. After boosting its stake in Q4, the holding company sold 46 million shares to start the year. Berkshire, which has owned the Buy-rated Dow Jones stock since the fourth quarter of 2020, still owns more than 84 million shares worth $17.5 billion as of quarter's end. And with a weight of more than 6.6% in the portfolio, CVX remains Berkshire's fifth-largest holding.

In another reprise from previous quarters, Buffett once again sold Bank of America (BAC) stock, which has been a major holding since 2017. Don't panic, though. Berkshire reduced its investment in the nation's second-largest bank by assets by less than 1%.

With 513 million shares worth more than $25 billion as of March 31, BAC slipped one place, to Berkshire's No. 3 holding.

In other sales, Berkshire continued to ease up on DaVita (DVA), its 11th-largest holding, this time 5%. The company also massively reduced exposure to Constellation Brands (STZ), a stake it initiated at the end of 2024, by 95%.

Elsewhere, Berkshire cut its stakes in Liberty Live Holdings (LLYVK) and Nucor (NUE), but with portfolio weights of less than 1%, respectively, these names don't move the needle.

The biggest changes came in the form of exits. After slashing its stake by 77% last quarter, Berkshire closed out its position in Amazon.com (AMZN).

A number of other familiar names were also banished from the portfolio. Apparently Berkshire is no longer a fan of payments processors, having exited its stakes in both Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA). The holding company owned both stocks since 2011.

Also getting the boot were Charter Communications (CHTR), Diageo (DEO), UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Domino's Pizza (DPZ), Heico (HEI), Lamar Advertising (LAMR), Formula One Group (FWONK), Atlanta Braves Holdings (BATRK), Pool Corp. (POOL), Allegion (ALLE), Aon (AON), Liberty Latin America Class A (LILA) and Liberty Latin America Class C (LILAK).

Berkshire's top five holdings

• Warren Buffett has always maintained a concentrated Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.
• The top five positions in the Berkshire portfolio account for 67% of its total value.
• Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Bank of America and Chevron are the five largest holdings.

As noted above, Buffett has always maintained a highly concentrated portfolio. Indeed, he's said that "diversification makes very little sense for anyone who knows what they're doing."

The stocks below accounted for 67% of Berkshire's total U.S. equities portfolio value as of the end of Q1. If you want to know what's driving the bulk of the Buffett's returns, check out the names below.

Apple

Buffett has called Apple "Berkshire's third business," so it should come as no surprise that the iPhone maker routinely takes the top spot among the holding company's positions.

True, Berkshire has pared its stake in Apple in recent quarters, but Buffett has assured shareholders he adores AAPL as much as ever. BRK.B's former CEO took pains to explain that the iPhone maker is still — er — the Apple of his eye.

For the record, the sales were for tax purposes. The greatest long-term investor of all time said that AAPL is "even better" than American Express or Coca-Cola, two "wonderful" businesses that Berkshire has owned since the early 1960s and late 1980s, respectively.

More recently, Buffett said he wasn't comfortable with Apple accounting for such an outsized weight in the portfolio.

As Apple's sixth-largest shareholder, Berkshire's continuing interest in the iPhone maker has market-wide implications.

American Express

Berkshire closed out its stakes in payments processors Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA), but it continues to adore American Express.

Buffett took his first stake in AmEx in the 1960s, and it’s still paying off a half-century later.

There's a lot to love about AmEx: Its management is strong; it's a dominant brand in the industry; and it generates copious amounts of free cash flow — the money left after essential capital expenditures are made that can be used to finance dividends and stock buybacks.

The current yield on the dividend isn't eye-catching, but it is safe and growing. The stock is only slightly more volatile than the broader market. Those are attributes that will help long-term investors sleep better at night.

Coca-Cola

Buffett famously drank Coca-Cola for 52 years before investing in the stock.

He finally took the plunge in 1988. "We expect to hold these securities for a long time," Buffett wrote back then of his new stake in Coke in a letter to Berkshire shareholders. "In fact, when we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever."

As of the end of Q1 2026, Berkshire owned 9.3% of Coca-Cola’s outstanding shares. Analysts like the stock's prospects, too. Wall Street gives KO a consensus recommendation of Buy, with strong conviction.

Bank of America

Bank of America is Berkshire Hathaway's fourth-largest holding. Buffett first acquired BAC stock in Q3 2017. Berkshire is the bank's second-largest institutional shareholder.

In an April 2023 media appearance, Buffett said that he unloaded many of the holding company's bank stocks because he didn't think they were near as solid investments as they once were. As for Bank of America, he said this about the bank and its CEO:

"I like [CEO] Brian Moynihan enormously. And I just don't wanna, I don't wanna sell it," the then 92-year-old CEO told CNBC's Becky Quick.

"But I did sell banks that we'd owned for 25 or 30 years. And if they asked me why I did it, I told them — I just think the system isn't set up quite right in terms of connecting punishment to culprits on something that's important," Buffett added.

Chevron

Thanks to the outlook for crude oil prices, the energy sector is enjoying steady and predictable free cash flow. Chevron, the only energy name among all 30 Dow Jones stocks, is returning some of this cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.

Make no mistake: There are few things Buffett likes more than dividends and buybacks.

It also helps that oil is a solid hedge against inflation. With inflation still running ahead of the Federal Reserve's 2% target, commodities should remain in favor.

Berkshire's massive pile of cash, equivalents and short-term investments is much better put to use in an asset such as Chevron under such conditions.

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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) initiated a small stake in The New York Times Company (NYT) in the fourth quarter but continued to pare back bets on core holdings such as Apple (AAPL) and Bank of America (BAC).

Buffett, who stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025 but remains chairman of the holding company, continued to cut Berkshire's exposure to equities as the market hit record highs.

In what was perhaps a nod to stretched valuations, Berkshire was once again a net seller of stocks, with net sales of approximately $4 billion in Q4. The holding company has now sold more stocks than it has bought for 13 consecutive quarters.

While exact figures will have to wait until Berkshire releases quarterly earnings on February 28, it's estimated that the company was a net seller of stocks to the tune of $14 billion in 2025.

Over the past three years, Berkshire sold more than $190 billion worth of equities. Also noteworthy is that Berkshire hasn't bought back its own stock since May 2024.

With a market cap of more than $1 trillion, Berkshire maintains a sort of "barbell" portfolio, as it holds approximately $280 billion in stocks and more than $380 billion in cash.

Although Berkshire has become more cautious, it did do some shopping in Q4. In addition to buying NYT, the holding company increased stakes in four of its holdings.

Before we get into Berkshire's most recent buys and sells, it's important to know that Buffett has always run a highly concentrated portfolio.

Excluding the company's Japanese brokerage stocks and other overseas equities, Apple alone accounts for more than a fifth of Berkshire's stock portfolio. (That's down from more than 40% at its peak.)

Furthermore, Berkshire's top five U.S. equity holdings comprise about 70% of its portfolio value, while the top 10 account for 88%.

As Buffett likes to say, diversification is for those who don't know what they're doing.

Also, please note that while Warren Buffett traditionally managed Berkshire Hathaway's largest equity positions, the management structure has officially transitioned.

Buffett has confirmed that CEO Greg Abel now oversees the entire portfolio, supported by investment manager Ted Weschler. Notably, Todd Combs – who previously managed a portion of the portfolio alongside Weschler – departed in late 2025 to take a role at JPMorgan Chase (JPM).

Stocks Warren Buffett is buying

Berkshire boosted its biggest bet in the energy sector, increasing its stake in Chevron (CVX) by almost 7%, or more than 8 million shares. Berkshire, which has owned the Buy-rated Dow Jones stock since the fourth quarter of 2020, now owns more than 130 million shares worth $19.8 billion as of the end of Q4. With a weight of more than 7% in the portfolio, CVX is Berkshire's fifth-largest holding.

In a boost of confidence for Chubb (CB), Berkshire once again upped its stake in the insurer. The holding company, which first bought CB in the first quarter of 2024, increased its position by more than 9%, or almost 3 million shares. With a market value of $10.7 billion as of December 31, CB remains the eighth-largest Berkshire Hathaway holding.

Elsewhere, Berkshire made minor additions to four of its smaller holdings.

Berkshire continued to add to its investment in Domino's Pizza (DPZ), which it initiated in the third quarter of 2024. The holding company increased its stake by more than 12% and now owns nearly 3.4 million shares in the pizza chain worth $1.4 billion as of the end of Q4. However, with a weight of 0.5% in the portfolio, DPZ is Berkshire's 20th-largest position.

As noted above, Berkshire initiated a small stake in NYT, purchasing 5 million shares worth $352 million at the end of Q4. With a weight of about 0.1%, the stake is Berkshire's 30th-largest position.

Lastly, Berkshire made an incremental and essentially immaterial additional investment in Lamar Advertising (LAMR). With a market value of $152 million, LAMR accounts for less than 0.1% of the portfolio.

Stocks Warren Buffett is selling

Buffett continued to pare back Berkshire's position in Apple, which, as recently as 2024, accounted for roughly 40% of its U.S. holdings. The company sold more than 10 million shares over the course of the fourth quarter – a 4% reduction – but Buffett has hardly lost faith in the iPhone maker.

With nearly 228 million shares worth $62 billion as of December 31, AAPL remains Berkshire's largest holding by far, accounting for nearly 23% of the portfolio's total value.

In another reprise from previous quarters, Buffett once again sold Bank of America stock, which has been a major holding since 2017. Berkshire reduced its investment in the nation's second-largest bank by assets by another 9% in Q4, selling more than 50 million shares.

With 517 million shares worth more than $28 billion as of December 31, BAC is Berkshire's third-largest holding, accounting for more than 10% of the portfolio value.

In other sales, Berkshire continued to ease up on DaVita (DVA), its 11th-largest holding, but only by 1.3%. The company also reduced exposure to Constellation Brands (STZ), a stake it initiated at the end of 2024, by 3%.

Other stocks Berkshire pared its stakes in included Aon (AON), Pool Corp. (POOL), Liberty Latin America Class A (LILA) and Atlanta Braves Holdings (BATRK).

Interestingly, Berkshire's most significant reduction in percentage terms was its stake in Amazon.com (AMZN). The conglomerate cut its position by 77%, offloading nearly 8 million shares of the Magnificent 7 stock. With a market value of approximately $525 million, Amazon has tumbled from Berkshire's 17th-largest holding at the end of Q3 to its 27th-largest position as of year-end 2025.

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Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B), is the most successful investor of our time.

His daughter, Susan, worked as my assistant when I was the publisher of a magazine 40 years ago.

Just before she got married, Susie told me she worried that her fiancé's parents had bought a couple of shares of Berkshire stock – and what if it tanked?

At the time, the price of the A-listed shares was about $1,000 apiece. Today, it's $771,315 a share. I hope the in-laws hung on.

In his latest annual report, Warren Buffett calculates that the average yearly gain in market value from his acquisition of Berkshire in 1965 through the end of 2024 was 19.9%, compared with 10.4% for the S&P 500 – an astounding difference, matched by no one of whom I'm aware. And Berkshire beat the market in two-thirds of the years.

First, let’s understand Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Buffett writes that in 1965, it was a "one-trick pony, the owner of a venerable – but doomed – New England textile operation." Buffett switched to insurance and bought National Indemnity, a company he still owns.

Today, Berkshire has three major kinds of investments: cash (a war chest of $334 billion as of December 31, 2024); companies that Berkshire operates and typically owns in full, ranging from GEICO to BNSF Railway to See's Candies; and publicly traded stocks that you can buy yourself.

At last count, Berkshire owned shares of nearly 40 different public companies, but a few dominate, with just five stocks accounting for 70% of the value of Buffett's stock holdings: Apple (AAPL), American Express (AXP), Bank of America (BAC), Coca-Cola (KO) and Chevron (CVX).

Buffett doesn't worry about concentration. He likes to quote the actress Mae West: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!"

But the overall portfolio (operating companies plus stocks) is certainly diversified by sector. He owns tech, banks, energy companies, consumer-goods firms, health care, automakers, retailers, media, railroads, charter jets, furniture, homebuilders, insurance and more.

Think like a partner

Buffett's goal, as he wrote in the Chairman's Letter of Berkshire's 2022 annual report, "is to make meaningful investments in businesses with both long-lasting favorable economic characteristics and trustworthy managers." The italics are his – and they’re essential.

Buffett thinks of investing not as buying a symbol with a number attached but as becoming a silent partner in a business.

"Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers." (Charlie Munger, Buffett's longtime partner, passed away on November 28, 2023; Buffett, the youngster, turned 94 in August 2024.)

The great advantage of owning publicly traded businesses, he writes, is that you can buy pieces of them – from time to time – "at wonderful prices."

Buffett’s mentor, the Columbia University scholar Benjamin Graham, used a metaphor in his 1949 book, The Intelligent Investor, to explain why.

Imagine a character called Mr. Market who is manic-depressive. Some days, he buys stocks in a mood of euphoria, pushing their prices to absurd heights; other days, he is depressed or panicked and sells at absurd depths.

In the latter instances, Mr. Market presents opportunities for you to buy, especially businesses that throw off cash.

In his 2022 annual report, Buffett uses Coca-Cola as an example. Between 1987 and 1994, he bought $1.3 billion worth of shares and never bought any more. In 1994, Coke’s dividend came to $75 million for Berkshire. In 2022, the payout from those shares was $704 million.

"Growth occurred every year, just as certain as birthdays. All Charlie and I were required to do was cash Coke's dividend checks." The value of Buffett's Coke shares grew to $28.7 billion as of September 2024, a 22-fold increase.

Buffett writes that the "lesson for investors" is this: “The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders."

"Over time" is the operative phrase. Buffett’s preferred holding period is forever. He does sell, but not often. In 2022, for example, he unloaded 50 million shares of U.S. Bancorp and made minor reductions in a few other holdings, including General Motors (GM) and Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD (BYD).

When a firm’s prospects change, move your money. As Munger says, "Don't bail away in a sinking boat if you can swim to one that is seaworthy."

The wisdom of patience 

Buffett follows the wisdom of Graham: "Day to day, the stock market is a voting machine; in the long term, it's a weighing machine." Translation: In the short term, stock prices might reflect little more than a popularity contest, but eventually, fundamental value will be revealed.

I frequently hear from readers who say that I tell them to invest for the long term, but they are already 70 years old, for goodness' sake!

If you believe your own time horizon is too short for the long term, you might remember that Buffett is patient in his 90s. Or pass the wisdom of patience on to the ones who really need it: your children and grandchildren.

"Having a long attention span and the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time is a huge advantage," said Munger. To the delight of their shareholders, Munger and Buffett have concentrated on – and we can expect their handpicked successors to do the same.

We shall soon see beginning in 2026 when Greg Abel officially takes the reins as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett announced in May that he is stepping down from the position at the end of 2025, but will remain on as chair.

For your own portfolio, you can pick and choose among Berkshire's stock holdings, which are widely tracked by the financial press, including Kiplinger.

Or you can buy Berkshire's own stock. The Class A shares, which have never split, may cost $771,315 each, but the B shares, which were launched in 1996, were recently $514. Berkshire is now the seventh-largest U.S. company by market capitalization (shares outstanding times price).

No longer increasing at twice the rate of the S&P 500 Index, Berkshire over the past 10 years has generated an average annual return of 13.5% vs 12.5% for the S&P 500. Is Buffett losing his touch?

Has Berkshire become so big that its days of beating the market are over? Perhaps, but I'm betting on Buffett, the spirit of Munger and their ability to identify successors who will continue to execute their vision. The stock might even be a bargain.

James K. Glassman chairs Glassman Advisory, a public-affairs consulting firm. He does not write about his clients. His most recent book is Safety Net: The Strategy for De-Risking Your Investments in a Time of Turbulence. You can contact him at JKGlassman@gmail.com.

Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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There are many ways to measure stability on Wall Street. For you and me and other individual investors, it's a basic question of identifying the best cash cows to buy.

Some market participants prioritize metrics such as the value of a company vs its underlying assets to make sure they're not overpaying for shares. Others seek steady operating cash flow; money comes in steadily and substantially, fueling growth and sustaining a solid business footing.

But value stocks can sometimes be value traps. Cheap stocks are often cheap for good reasons. Often, they do get cheaper. At the end of the day, there really is only one measure of how stable a stock is: cold, hard cash on the balance sheet.

That's the best indicator of a high-quality business, and it's also a sign of a solid stock to buy for the long term.

High-quality cash cows

"The global economy is poised to accelerate in 2026," write UBS Global Research strategists in their 2026-27 markets outlook. "Business and consumer confidence has improved, the global credit impulse has turned positive, and we expect several major advanced economies to benefit from additional fiscal stimulus."

UBS does see "a soft patch" as tariffs feed through to prices and exports, though they believe "high-quality stocks should outperform." And their forecast didn't contemplate war in the Middle East.

Still, the following cash cows have resources that equip them to weather a downturn and to grow their businesses amid inevitable uncertainty about the macroeconomic landscape.

• Sector: Financials
• Market value: $1.1 trillion
• Cash on hand: $397.4 billion

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) is closely watched by many investors for many different reasons. Warren Buffett and his shareholder letters are famous for their down-to-earth market wisdom. The first letter from new CEO Greg Abel, who replaced Buffett in January, promises the same investing playbook, with perhaps a little less folksy flair.

The firm's reputation for shrewd investment means its filings are closely watched as an indicator of what stocks the smart money is watching.

Lately, however, BRK.B has been attracting interest because of how much money it has on the sidelines. At the end of Abel's first quarter as CEO, the company boasted $397.4 billion in cash and short-term investments to set a company record. A recent build-up in Berkshire's cash reserves reflects Buffett's experience as well as Abel's current perspective.

During the 2008 global financial crisis, the company made tremendous use of its stockpile through shrewd and well-timed transactions. At the same time, with volatility and uncertainty spiking, Buffett, Abel and Berkshire may simply not want to risk making a bad move.

Either way, the strong balance sheet makes BRK.B a pretty darn reliable cash cow for the foreseeable future.

• Sector: Consumer discretionary
• Market value: $2.6 trillion
• Cash on hand: $146.0 billion

A dealmaker of a different kind, Amazon.com (AMZN) boasted $146 billion in cash on hand at the end of the first quarter to make it another cash cow worth watching.

The company has a history of bold additions to build out new arms of its business, from paying roughly $1 billion for streaming platform Twitch in 2014 to acquiring grocer Whole Foods for about $14 billion in 2017. In 2022, it snapped up entertainment icon MGM for almost $9 billion.

Management announced a $4 billion investment in AI platform Anthropic in 2023, a deal that seems like only a steppingstone to the $50 billion deal with Open AI signed in February. Indeed, Amazon.com said it will spend $200 billion on AI in 2026.

At the same time, the company's net income continues to grow — as does its impressive cash stockpile.

Regardless, AMZN is a cash cow with plenty of dry powder to make deals — or weather any short-term turbulence in consumer spending.

• Sector: Communication services
• Market value: $4.4 trillion
• Cash on hand: $126.8 billion

Another Big Tech darling, Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) had $126.8 billion on hand at the end of Q1, up significantly from $95.3 billion a year ago.

That's despite a significant increase in infrastructure capex related to building out AI functionality. Indeed, GOOGL is not afraid to spend. Alphabet is on track to close its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security platform Wiz, and management plans to more than double its capex budget in 2026 to $185 billion from $91 billion in 2025.

Tremendous operational consistency and unrivaled scale make GOOGL one of the most reliable Silicon Valley stocks out there. And it still has tens of billions in dry powder.

This is another cash cow with more than enough resources to weather any short-term disruptions and/or make additional deals in the months ahead.

• Sector: Communication services
• Market value: $1.5 trillion
• Cash on hand: $81.5 billion

The parent of Facebook and Instagram, among other properties, Meta Platforms (META) is a lean and tech-savvy communication services stock with deep pockets and a history of aggressive growth via big-ticket deals.

Examples of Meta's expansive ambitions include the $19 billion takeover of messaging platform WhatsApp in 2014 and the $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012.

Deal place slowed some as Meta faced antitrust scrutiny for its digital media platforms. In November, a judge ruled Meta does not have a monopoly in the social networking space.

Last year, Meta spent $10 billion for a massive AI data center in northeast Louisiana that's powered by dedicated natural gas facilities. And it's announced massive AI spending plans.

And, because CEO Mark Zuckerberg is running a profitable company without any major purchases to pay for, META can spend $135 billion in 2026 on data centers, chips and AI tools.

And its cash pile continues to grow. As of the end of the first quarter, the firm reported $81.5 billion in cash and equivalents.

The ability to invest heavily in infrastructure and still keep growing its bank account makes Meta a cash cow to watch.

• Sector: Technology
• Market value: $3.1 trillion
• Cash on hand: $78.3 billion

Rounding out the list of cash cows is tech leader Microsoft (MSFT), which has long been a leader in corporate America for its bulletproof balance sheet. It's one of just two companies in the U.S. that has a tip-top AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's. (Fellow Dow Jones stock Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is the other.)

Microsoft has a slightly smaller stack of cash than these other stocks, but Wall Street sees it as even more creditworthy.

It also pays mammoth dividends to shareholders of about $27 billion annually. That's cash it can fall back on if things ever get tight.

Its massive war chest has survived a bank-busting merger with software giant Activision Blizzard, which closed in 2023 at a value of more than $68 billion.

Microsoft's software-as-a-service revenue model, coupled with a world-class portfolio of business tools, makes for reliable cash flow to ensure it will continue to have deep pockets for many years to come.

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Sell calls are pretty rare on Wall Street, so when analysts collectively give any name a thumbs down it's probably wise to toss it in the stocks to sell – or at least avoid – pile.

Fortunately, as noted, such stocks are indeed unusual. To get a sense of just how reluctant industry analysts are to issue Sell recommendations, simply take a look at the S&P 500. Only five components of the benchmark index rate a consensus recommendation of Sell, per S&P Global Market Intelligence. 

Interestingly, four of these names happen to be members of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats, an index of companies that have increased their dividends annually for at least 25 consecutive years. The Aristocrats are generally considered to be the best dividend stocks for dividend growth, and long-term investors shouldn't dump them automatically just because analysts are negative on them at current levels.

Remember: When an analyst rates a stock at Sell, all that implies is that the equity in question is forecast to underperform the broader market by some margin over the next 12 months or so. Income investors with extended holding periods – we're talking anywhere from five years to decades – needn't worry about such shorter term concerns. The magic of compounding will still redound to truly patient dividend-growth investors. 

Here's how we found the five stocks to sell or avoid now. Using data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, we screened the S&P 500 for the stocks with the highest-conviction consensus Sell recommendations by industry analysts.

A note on how the ratings system works: S&P surveys analysts' stock calls and scores them on a five-point scale, where 1.0 equals a Strong Buy and 5.0 is a Strong Sell. Any score higher than 3.5 means that analysts, on average, rate the stock at Sell. The closer a score gets to 5.0, the stronger the consensus Sell recommendation.

After running the screen we were left with the five following names. Although they come from sectors as diverse as consumer staples, financials and utilities, they all have one thing in common: The Street expects them to underperform the broader market over the next year or so.

Market data and analysts' recommendations are as of March 8, courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Stocks are listed by strength of conviction of analysts' Sell calls, from weakest to strongest.

• Market value: $18.7 billion
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: 3.52 (Sell)

Clorox (CLX) stock is off to a strong start in 2023 – up 8.7% vs. 4.3% for the S&P 500 – but analysts don't expect the outperformance to last. That's because the consumer staples stalwart is dealing with both a post-COVID-19 hangover and higher input costs.

"The company had benefited from increased sales during the pandemic as demand for cleansing products spiked," writes Argus Research analyst Taylor Conrad, who rates CLX at Hold. "As benefits from the pandemic have subsided, inflation has put sales and margins under pressure. The company's revenue has fallen from peak pandemic levels, with sequential declines in five of the past eight quarters."

Of the 21 analysts covering this blue chip dividend stock tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, one calls it a Strong Buy, one says Buy, nine have it at Hold, six rate it at Sell and four call it a Strong Sell. Their average target price of $141.40 gives Clorox stock implied downside of about 6.5% over the next 12 months or so. 

• Market value: $32.6 billion
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: 3.56 (Sell)

Founded in 1823, Consolidated Edison (ED) provides electric, gas or steam services to roughly 3.6 million customers in New York City and Westchester County. ConEd also happens to be one of North America's largest solar power providers.

ED stock tends to lag the broader market over pretty much any time frame you care to chart, but it never really underperforms to a disastrous degree, either. Wall Street has never expected much in the way of outperformance, anyway. Indeed, ED has carried a consensus recommendation of Hold or Sell for more than 20 years. 

No, ED won't wow investors with its price potential, but few names are more reliable at raising their dividends. This Dividend Aristocrat has hiked its disbursement annually for 49 years. 

Ten analysts rate the stock at Hold, three say Sell and three call it a Strong Sell. Their average price target of $88.50 gives ED implied downside of about 4% in the next year.

• Market value: $17.3 billion
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: 3.59 (Sell)

Global macroeconomics aren't being very kind to transportation and logistics services companies these days, and Expeditors International of Washington (EXPD) has been no exception.

"We expect the current environment of weak demand and significantly lower airfreight and ocean rates to persist in 2023," writes UBS analyst Thomas Wadewitz, who rates EXPD at Sell.

Wadewitz has plenty of company on the Street. Of the 17 analysts covering EXPD tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 11 call it a Hold, two say Sell and four rate it at Strong Sell. That works out to a consensus recommendation of Sell, albeit with moderate conviction. Meanwhile, the Street's average price target of $99.87 gives EXPD stock implied downside of about 11% in the next 12 months or so.

Income investors can at least count on EXPD's regular dividend increases. The company, which pays a semiannual dividend, has hiked the payout annually for almost three decades.

• Market value: $14.2 billion
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: 3.69 (Sell)

Franklin Resources (BEN), along with its subsidiaries, is best known as Franklin Templeton investments. The global investment firm with $1.5 trillion in assets under management is among the largest in the world.

BEN stock was beating the S&P 500 by about 4 percentage points for the year-to-date through March 8, but the Street doesn't expect the lead to last. Mutual fund providers are under pressure as customers eschew traditional stock pickers in favor of indexed investments. That trend in outflows has much of the Street worried about BEN's prospects. 

On the other hand, this Dividend Aristocrat's reliable and generous dividend history should not be overlooked, analysts note.

"While ongoing net asset outflows temper our view, we think the shares are worth holding amid an expected tailwind from an equity market rally and the potential for further industry consolidation," writes CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert (Hold).

Seven analysts rate BEN at Hold, while three call it a Sell and three rate it at Strong Sell. Their average price target of $26.92 gives shares implied downside of about 5% in the next year or so.

• Market value: $19.6 billion
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: 3.71 (Sell)

No stock in the S&P 500 gets a lower consensus recommendation from Wall Street than Principal Financial Group (PFG). 

Of the 14 analysts covering the investment and retirement management firm, one calls it a Strong Buy, five rate it at Hold, four say Sell and four call it a Strong Sell. Although their average target price of $83.08 does give shares implied upside of about 3% in the next 12 months or so, analysts expect PFG's total return to lag that of the broader market.

If PFG is expected to disappoint this year, that's partly due to the fact that it has so overwhelmingly outperformed in the recent past. Shares returned almost 33% over the past 52 weeks vs. a decline of 2.7% for the S&P 500. The trailing three-year annualized return likewise clobbered the broader market, with PFG up 30% vs. 12.1% for the S&P 500. 

PFG faces fundamental hurdles as well, such as lower performance fees and higher expenses, notes Credit Suisse analyst Andrew Kligerman, who rates shares at Underweight (the equivalent of Sell). 

This week, Green Thumb Industries (GTBIF) kicked off a busy stretch of fourth-quarter and end-of-year earnings releases from cannabis companies. 

Several announcements have already been released from marijuana stocks that are of less interest due to poor management, balance sheets, capital allocation and business strategy. Those reports have come and gone, primarily forgotten about or noted negatively for continuing with behaviors likely to be punitive to shareholders. 

Plenty of ink has already been spilled covering the negativity there, but it reminds us of a quote from the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report that was released on Feb. 25, 2023: 

"Don't bail away in a sinking boat if you can swim to one that is seaworthy."

With that in mind, let's focus on a few observations from Poseidon's desk through this earnings season. 

Green Thumb Industries Q4 earnings, by the numbers 

This past week, Green Thumb Industries got earnings for multi-state operators (MSOs) rolling. GTI beat fourth-quarter revenue estimates largely on the back of the legalization of recreational cannabis in New Jersey. The Garden State is poised to become one of the largest recreational cannabis markets on the East Coast. 

The total revenue reported by Green Thumb Industries was $259.3 million, up 6.4%  year-over-year. The topline revenue number was a bit ahead of consensus, while gross margins were below expectations. Still, Green Thumb's continued execution and cost controls drove a slight beat on EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). 

There was noise around wholesale price compression as a primary driver impacting gross margins, but it's worth noting how decreased pricing drove comparable sales improvement in the mid-single-digit range. This is a cannabis trend to watch for: As prices decline across various markets, volumes often offset a net revenue decline as the industry takes share from the illicit market. 

Green Thumb Industries noted that they continue to focus on gross margins over longer periods. In the near term, they are targeting operating expense efficiencies to continue improving their cash-generative capability and balance sheet. Unfortunately, some U.S. operators repeated Canada's mistakes by building too much capacity, but high-quality teams like GTI are proving more capable of managing through. The management team specifically mentioned how they monitor individual markets (i.e., states) for capital expenditures. They aim to avoid markets that see overspending as it's a likely indicator of coming price declines. 

It's also important to note the goodwill write-down Green Thumb Industries took, which had some one-time implications on the results. We expect to see many others do the same, and likely to a larger extent, given the preponderance of M&A around the last cycle's peak, along with higher prices and increased transactions. GTI has largely remained steadfast, steering its own course without getting duped by FOMO (fear of missing out). We'll close MSO earnings observations with another great quote from the Berkshire Hathaway letter:

"The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders."

Innovative Industrial Properties earnings highlight struggles in cannabis industry

In comparison to GTI's thoughtful capital management, Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR), the leading real estate lender for the cannabis industry, reported results highlighting how some of its borrowers are struggling to pay bills due to overbuilding capacity while taking on expensive lease structures. 

Due to the combination of capital drought, price compression and unsustainable lease rates, rent collection on the IIPR's portfolio slipped to 92% at the end of February compared to 97% for all of 2022. While leverage is not an issue for the company and liquidity remains comfortable, the annual filings reflect a stark difference in operating performance among cannabis operators. Where some operators appear to be quickly approaching insolvency, others are producing tens of millions in quarterly cash flows. 

The earnings reports from both GTI and IIPR are indications of the greater trends we expect to see from all operators in the industry. There were other earnings out this week from RIV Capital (CNPOF), MariMed (MRMD) and Grown Rogue (GRUSF). Those were not covered in this week's column given the depth of the discussion, but we wanted to point those out for our loyal weekly readers. 

What to watch for in cannabis earnings this year 

Price compression will continue as a consistent topic. We monitor this closely, leveraging the most detailed insights from data providers like Headset. Although consensus predictions from 2023 will be for continued compression, it's unlikely that management teams discuss how deep cuts to capital expenditures and limited investment capital across the industry could provide indications of price stabilization by Q3 or Q4. 

This year, cash flow will be the top priority for every major cannabis company. Cash flow is generally the only path for companies to avoid either highly dilutive financing or consolidation within a stronger-performing peer. We expect to see capital expenditures decline dramatically, as well as cuts made across all operating expenses from lease rates to labor.

Finally, balance sheets will be another trending topic, as the liquidity of firms will be the leading indicator of their ability to survive in this environment. Cash balance and inventory levels will be highlighted as liquidity sources, and tax management and strategy will also be crucial to help avoid investor concerns about liabilities to lenders who rarely negotiate. 

Predictions for the next cycle of cannabis M&A

We foresee a healthy phase for cannabis and a unique opportunity for investors. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. cannabis industry had massive inflows of investment capital with minimal concern towards underwriting. This led to a state in which operators would be forced to focus on cash flow generation for their liquidity needs. That dynamic made it difficult for fundamentally driven cannabis investors to reflect alpha in their strategy as the rising tide lifted all boats. Even worse, when the tide went out, all boats were beached, regardless of who was seaworthy. 

As investors that are actively allocating in this operationally focused stage of the industry, we continue to gain a stronger sense of which companies will be consolidators in a challenging environment. Currently, there are fewer dollars buying more equity with arguably less risk than ever before. Businesses that were poor capital allocators and disregarded operational acumen will fall by the wayside. The future leaders of the cannabis industry will take market share from fallen peers and the illicit market and then generate cash for liquidity needs, all while valuations stay dormant amid limited updates on federal cannabis legalization and other policies. 

There are countless catalysts that could cause a positive reset in the valuations to compare more efficiently to peers in CPG or alcohol. In the meantime, we have the opportunity to allocate towards cash-flowing businesses in a global, secular growth industry, with the prospects of these companies becoming multi-generational incumbents of a $100 billion area of the market. 

An unexpectedly strong retail sales report weighed on the major benchmarks in early trading Wednesday, though the three indexes flipped higher by the close. Investors also sifted through an onslaught of 13F filings released overnight, which included a surprisingly quick turnaround for one of Warren Buffett's portfolio picks.  

While Tuesday's inflation data showed consumer prices moderated more slowly than expected in January, today's retail sales report suggested consumer spending was strong last month. Specifically, the Commerce Department said retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 3% from December to January. Spending at bars and restaurants was 7.2% higher – the biggest monthly increase since March 2021 – while auto sales were up 5.9%. On an annual basis, retail sales jumped 6.4%. 

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"The American consumer went on a shopping spree in January. The consumer still has money saved and will continue to spend it as long as the labor market remains robust," says Edward Moya, senior market strategist at currency data provider OANDA. "The U.S. economy is looking like it will have a solid first quarter and recession doubts are getting some vindication here. The data-dependent Fed is seeing its case for more ongoing rate increases get bolstered after both inflation accelerated and as retail sales rebound sharply in January."

Meanwhile, following yesterday's release of fourth-quarter 13F filings, many investors were focused on which stocks Warren Buffett is buying and selling. Most notably, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) – Buffett's holding company – drastically reduced its stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) in Q4 after initiating the position in the third quarter. This sent TSM down 5.3% today, dragging several semiconductor stocks like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, -0.9%) and Micron Technology (MU, -0.4%) down with it. 

As for the major indexes, the Nasdaq Composite closed up 0.9% at 12,070, the S&P 500 gained 0.3% to 4,147, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1% to 34,128.  

The best tech stocks to buy

The Nasdaq's outperformance today came courtesy of a few well-received earnings reports, namely vacation rental company Airbnb (ABNB, +13.4%), video game firm Roblox (RBLX, +26.4%) and AI lending stock Upstart (UPST, +28.1%). But while today's price action extends a recent run higher from 2022's most beaten-down area of the market, uncertainty remains – especially following last week's surprisingly strong jobs report and this morning's impressive retail sales data. 

"The resiliency of the consumer is another sign that areas of the economy remain robust even amid talks of a recession," says Mike Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley. "Expect some volatility in the near-term as investors mull over the Fed's next steps and what, if anything, could lead it to cut rates in the calendar year." 

Still, for investors looking to play the hot hand of the market, there are plenty of ideas, including those found among the best growth stocks and the best tech stocks to buy now.

Warren Buffett's retirement as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) marks the end of an era, but it's unlikely to be the end of the holding company's love of high-quality dividend stocks.

To be sure, much will change. New CEO Greg Abel is creating his own vision for Berkshire Hathaway. Meanwhile, Todd Combs, who, along with Ted Weschler, had managed perhaps 10% of Berkshire Hathaway's stock portfolio, left in December to take a job at JPMorgan Chase (JPM).

The days of investors diligently tracking every one of Berkshire's buys and sells just won't be the same.

Be that as it may, the Oracle of Omaha has said that his preferred holding period is "forever," and that's been a winning formula when it comes to Buffett's best dividend stocks.

What Buffett has to say about dividend stocks 

Berkshire famously doesn't pay a dividend of its own, even as Buffett liked to rake them in with both fists. There's no hypocrisy here. Buffett is a master of capital allocation. Investors entrust him with their capital to maximize their returns. Why would Buffett return cash to shareholders via a dividend that yields, say, 2% when he's confident he can generate a greater return on their capital elsewhere?

When he's on the other side of the deal, however, Buffett has had an abiding love for long-term and reliable dividend payers. For one thing, dividends enforce management discipline, he's said. Even better is the magic of compounding.

When a company raises its dividend regularly over an extended period of time, the yield on an investor's cost basis goes up. Hold on long enough at that puny 2% yield you started with, and it could hit double-digits or more one day.

Buffett periodically liked to highlight this fact in his annual letters to shareholders, noting that —– spoiler alert —– in 1994, Berkshire received $75 million in Coca-Cola (KO) cash dividends. Less than two decades later, that sum had ballooned to more than $700 million.

"Growth occurred every year, just as certain as birthdays," Buffett wrote. "All Charlie [Munger] and I were required to do was cash Coke's quarterly dividend checks. We expect that those checks are highly likely to grow."

They have.

How we chose the best Buffett dividend stocks

Note that Berkshire amassed its massive KO stake back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Based on the initial cost of the investment, the dividend yield on Buffett's stake is around 60%.

With that example being top of mind, we screened Berkshire's portfolio for the best Buffett dividend stocks based on the current forward yield, commitment to dependable dividend growth over the long haul, and analysts' consensus recommendations.

Have a look at five of the best Buffett dividend stocks.

• Market value: $341.6 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.7%
• Percentage of Berkshire Hathaway portfolio: 11.6%
• Berkshire Hathaway ownership stake: 9.3%

No surprises here. Few companies have Coca-Cola's track record when it comes to returning cash to shareholders. Indeed, this member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index has increased its payout annually for more than six decades.

Buffett quipped that he drank Coke — and watched its stock — for more than 50 years before finally taking the plunge in 1988. Today, KO is Berkshire's third-largest holding, one that generated $816 million in dividend income in 2025.

KO stock has trailed the broader market over the past few years, but analysts say it's poised to get its momentum back. The Buy-rated Dow Jones stock remains one of Wall Street's favorite names in the consumer staples sector. Analysts surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence give shares a consensus recommendation of Buy, with high conviction to boot.

• Market value: $400.7 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.0%
• Percentage of Berkshire Hathaway portfolio: 9.5%
• Berkshire Hathaway ownership stake: 7.2%

Buffett first bought Bank of America (BAC) back in 2017, and he's clearly pretty fond of it. Even as Berkshire slashed or outright exited stakes in a host of financial stocks over the years, he remained committed to the nation's second biggest bank by assets.

Partly that's because BAC stock paid Berkshire about $625 million in cash dividends in 2025.

It also helps that BAC has raised its dividend annually for 13 years and counting.

True, Buffett has been trimming Berkshire's BAC stake over the past few quarters, but it is still the holding company's fourth-largest position.

The Street likes BAC over the shorter term as well. Industry analysts give shares a consensus recommendation of Buy, with very high conviction.

"We believe that the current BAC share price undervalues the franchise given ongoing improvement in return metrics and continued positive operating leverage," writes Argus Research analyst Stephen Biggar, who rates the financial stock at Buy.

• Market value: $34.8 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.5%
• Percentage of Berkshire Hathaway portfolio: 1.4%
• Berkshire Hathaway ownership stake: 8.1%

When Buffett initiated a stake in Kroger (KR) in 2019, it looked like a classic defensive dividend play. With almost 2,700 locations in 35 states, Kroger is one of the nation's largest grocery retailer.

It's a low-margin business in a defensive sector, but it sure does pay dividends. Heck, Kroger has hiked its dividend annually for 19 straight years — and at a compound annual growth rate of 13%.

As a low-beta stock, KR tends to lag the broader market when everything is going up. It also tends to hold up better when stocks are selling off. Interestingly, KR has generated competitive long-term performance vs the S&P 500 despite the secular bull market.

Looking at the next 12 to 18 months, the Street gives KR stock a consensus recommendation of Buy, albeit with somewhat mixed conviction.

Kroger is Berkshire's 12th-largest holding.

• Market value: $4.37 trillion
• Dividend yield: 0.4%
• Percentage of Berkshire Hathaway portfolio: 22%
• Berkshire Hathaway ownership stake: 1.6%

Don't let the paltry yield on Apple's (AAPL) dividend fool you. Yes, the company gets flack for its tiny yield, but that's partly a function of its soaring share price and partly due to its strict dividend policy.

Apple prefers returning cash to shareholders through stock buybacks, which are more tax-friendly. As such, it generally follows a regimen where it regularly raises its dividend by only one cent.

That sounds like a lousy deal until you realize that Apple's dividend has increased at a compound annual growth rate of more than 7% over the past decade. Buffett's No. 1 pick, which he first bought in 2016, paid Berkshire $280 million in cash dividends last year.

Meanwhile, investors counting on future increases to the payout can probably rest easy. In fiscal 2025, Apple generated $98.7 billion in free cash flow — and that was after paying out more than $15 billion in dividends.

The Street gives Apple a consensus recommendation of Buy, with mixed conviction.

• Market value: $230.5 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.1%
• Percentage of Berkshire Hathaway portfolio: 17.4%
• Berkshire Hathaway ownership stake: 22.2%

Buffett really loves American Express (AXP). He first bought the stock in the 1960s, but he didn't start building Berkshire's massive long-term holding until the 1990s.

Today, Berkshire owns more than a fifth of the financial company's shares outstanding. And at more than 20% of its U.S. equity portfolio, AXP is Berkshire's second-largest holding after Apple.

AXP's dividend yield won't impress impatient equity income investors. Those with longer horizons will appreciate the fact that AXP has increased its payout at a compound annual growth rate of more than 11% over the past decade.

Analysts are split on AXP over the shorter term, giving shares a consensus recommendation of Hold.

Speaking for the bulls, Argus Research analyst Stephen Biggar cites a competitive strength in making his Buy call on AXP.

"The company's customers, who tend to have higher incomes than those of other credit card companies as well as better credit scores, are generally more insulated from economic distress and have not shown signs of slower spending despite periods of high inflation and interest rates," the analyst writes.

Related content

• 9 Warren Buffett Quotes for Investors to Live By
• A Timeline of Warren Buffett's Life and Berkshire Hathaway
• 5 of Warren Buffett's Best Investments
• 7 of Warren Buffett's Biggest Misses

Some early Wednesday gains sparked hope that markets might just get a Santa Claus rally after all. Any optimism was quickly dashed, however, as the major market indexes turned lower in light trading after the latest housing data fanned fears of a potential recession in the new year.  

Looking at the economic data, the National Association of Realtors this morning said that pending home sales were down 4% month-over-month in November, marking their sixth straight decline. "The November level of pending homes sales plummeted close to pandemic lows as the housing market cools," says Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial. "As a leading indicator for the residential real estate market, low pending home sales should inform investors that we have not likely seen the bottom." 

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And it wasn't just the dismal housing data that had stocks reversing lower today. "The market appears to be exhausted, understandably, no longer expecting a large technical rally and just hoping to get to Friday afternoon without any further meaningful losses," says Louis Navellier, chairman and founder of Navellier & Associates. "Most of the year's major uncertainties: China COVID, the war in Ukraine, tight energy supplies, and hawkish central banks, will be waiting for us on the other side."

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite once again led the path down, shedding 1.4% to 10,213, as index heavyweights Apple (AAPL, -3.1%) and Amazon.com (AMZN, -1.5%) declined. The broader S&P 500 Index (-1.2% at 3,783) and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (-1.1% at 32,875) also ended in the red.

Why Investors Should Be Watching Buffett

One notable advancer today was Tesla (TSLA), which rebounded 3.3% after Tuesday's brutal selloff. But while Tesla stock is on pace to end 2022 down by nearly 68%, it remains "a perennial favorite among investors," says Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, in recapping some of the biggest share price moves of the past year. 

The analyst adds that Meta Platforms (META) is another previous highflier that has dramatically lost value in 2022. "[B]ut some investors will have been buying [META stock] to capitalize on the share drop in the hope its fortunes will turn around as the company restructures."

As for those that have artfully maneuvered the extreme stock market volatility of 2022, Streeter points to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). The holding company "remains a top pick for investors hoping the steady hand of the Sage of Omaha will see them through any storms ahead." Buffett and his lieutenants did a lot of bargain hunting in 2022 as the equities market plummeted. Berkshire increased exposure to energy stocks by boosting stakes in Occidental Petroleum (OXY) and Chevron (CVX), and added to its tech sector bets via a third-quarter purchase of Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) shares. To see the other stocks Buffett & Co. feel are worth their time, check out the entire Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.

Stocks bolted out of the gate Tuesday after another data point showed inflation eased in October. The major markets pared some of these earlier gains in afternoon trading amid reports Russian missiles crossed into Poland, a member of NATO, but they still managed to end the day higher.

The Labor Department this morning said its producer price index (PPI), which measures what suppliers are charging businesses and other customers for goods and services, rose 8% year-over-year in October. This was slower than September's 8.4% increase. On a monthly basis, the PPI accelerated 0.2%, matching last month's number. Core PPI, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, also rose at a slower pace than what was seen in September.

"The PPI read certainly adds more fuel to the fire for those who feel we may finally be on a downward inflation trend," says Mike Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley. "The market embraced last week's consumer downtick and today's initial reaction seems to be more of the same as expectations rise that the Fed could pull back from 75 basis point hikes next month, especially considering [Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair Lael] Brainard's comments on slowing the hikes yesterday."

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The market also responded positively to third-quarter earnings beats from retail giants Home Depot (HD, +1.6%) and Walmart (WMT, +6.5%). These results come ahead of a busy stretch of retail earnings, with Lowe's (LOW, +2.0%) and Target (TGT, +4.0%) on deck to unveil their Q3 financial results.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2% at 33,592, the S&P 500 Index was 0.9% higher at 3,991, and the Nasdaq Composite had gained 1.5% to 11,358.

Warren Buffett's Q3 Buys and Sells

The Nasdaq's outperformance came largely at the hands of semiconductor stocks. And the most talked about chipmaker today was Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), which rallied 10.5% on news that one of Wall Street's most revered investors took a massive stake in the company. 

Specifically, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) late Monday filed its latest Form 13F, a quarterly disclosure the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires of all institutional investors with $100 million or more in assets. The regulatory filing revealed that Buffett bought 60.1 million shares in the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer, making TSM the 10th largest position in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio. 

This wasn't the only move Buffett & Co. made in the third quarter, though. Here, we take a closer look at all the stocks Warren Buffett bought and sold in Q3, including the one position he completely exited. Check them out.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) initiated a position in Capital One Financial (COF) in the first quarter, reduced its stakes in nine other stocks and exited holdings in four more names, including Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) and U.S. Bancorp (USB).

In total, Berkshire Hathaway was a net seller of equities to the tune of $10.4 billion during the first three months of the year. The holding company also spent $4.4 billion buying back its own stock.

On the buy side of Berkshire's ledger, chairman and CEO Warren Buffett – or his co-portfolio managers Ted Weschler or Todd Combs – bought 9.9 million shares in COF worth $954.9 million as of March 31, according to regulatory filings. With a 0.3% weighting, however, the stock represents a tiny part of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.

The addition of Capital One, a bank holding company, is notable in that Buffett has mostly been getting out of bank stocks for some time. At the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting in May, the legendary long-term investor said he first lost his appetite for bank stocks at the beginning of the pandemic, citing an overly complicated banking system, mismanagement and bad incentives.

Berkshire has dumped shares in JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), Wells Fargo (WFC) and PNC Financial (PNC) over the past few years. BNY and USB have now joined the list of former Berkshire bank holdings.

"The American public doesn’t understand their banking system — and some people in Congress don’t understand it anymore than I understand it," Buffett told the Berkshire faithful earlier this month.

Buffett does maintain a major position in Bank of America (BAC). Other financial sector holdings include American Express (AXP), Jefferies Financial Group (JEF), Citigroup (C) and Visa (V), to name a few.

In another move on the buy side of the ledger, Berkshire upped its stake in Occidental Petroleum (OXY) by 17.4 million shares in Q1. As was previously disclosed, Berkshire now holds 211.7 million shares worth $13.2 billion as of quarter's end. Although Berkshire owns roughly a quarter of OXY's common stock – and has regulatory approval to purchase up to half of the oil and gas firm's shares – Buffett said at the annual meeting that Berkshire will not acquire it outright. 

Warren Buffett was much busier selling

In addition to eliminating its equity investments in Bank of New York Mellon and U.S. Bancorp, Buffett also sold off the remainder of Berkshire's stake in Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) in Q1. Berkshire slashed its TSMC holdings by 86% in the fourth quarter after initiating a major position just three months earlier. 

Buffett attributed his abrupt volte-face on TSMC to concerns over China's increasingly bellicose claims to the island nation. "I don't like its location, and I've reevaluated that," Buffett said.  

Berkshire also exited its stake in RH (RH), formerly known as Restoration Hardware. 

As previously disclosed, Buffett cut Berkshire's stake in Chevron (CVX) by 18%, leaving it with 132.4 million shares worth $21.6 billion as of March 31. The CVX stake now accounts for 6.7% of the Berkshire equity portfolio, or its fifth largest holding, down from 9.8% three months ago. 

In another notable move, Buffett slashed Berkshire's equity investment in General Motors (GM) by a fifth. The stake is thought to have been initiated by Weschler or Combs, but Buffett did weigh in on the auto industry at the company's annual meeting, saying "I don’t think I can tell you what the auto industry will look like five or 10 years from now."

Other reductions saw Berkshire pare stakes in McKesson (MKC), Celanese (CE), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Jefferies Financial (JEF), Amazon.com (AMZN), Aon (AON) and Ally Financial (ALLY). 

Berkshire Hathaway has always maintained a highly concentrated portfolio. And a change in the way it reports the stock holdings of a subsidiary boosted its recorded ownership in a number of companies, even though Berkshire didn't buy more shares. 

Rising share prices in some of its largest investments also increased the concentration of Berkshire's holdings. For example, Apple (AAPL) now accounts for more than 46% of the portfolio, up from 38.9% at the end of Q4. 

All told, Berkshire Hathaway's five largest equity investments – AAPL, BAC, AXP, Coca-Cola (KO) and CVX – comprise almost 78% of the portfolio's total value. 

Much of AAPL's increased weighting in the portfolio can be attributed to the fact that Apple stock is soaring in 2023. Shares in the company, which Buffett has called Berkshire's "third business," are up by a third for the year-to-date. 

Of course, Apple is one of the best stocks of the past 30 years. A mere $1,000 invested in Apple stock 20 years ago would have generated stupefying returns too.

Stocks continued to climb Friday, boosted by hope that Thursday's inflation data, which showed a slower-than-expected rise in consumer prices last month, could have the Fed easing back on rate hikes sooner rather than later. 

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.9% to 11,323, while the broader S&P 500 Index rose 0.9% to 3,992 – building on Thursday's impressive rally. And while the Dow Jones Industrial Average spent most of the day lower on weakness in healthcare stocks UnitedHealth (UNH, -4.1%) and Merck (MRK, -3.9%), a late-day burst of buying power helped the blue-chip index eke out a modest gain (+0.1% to 33,747). It was the best week for the Nasdaq (+8.1%) since March, and for the S&P 500 (+5.9%) since June.

Despite the deceleration in inflation last month, today's economic data shows prices remain uncomfortably high for consumers. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index fell more than expected in November, to 54.7 from October's 59.9 – erasing about half the gains the index has seen since hitting a historic low in June. Additionally, consumers' expectations for where inflation will be at this time next year rose to 5.1% from last month's reading of 5%.

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José Torres, senior economist at Interactive Brokers, says today's consumer sentiment data points to a potentially rocky road ahead. "This month's reading reflects broad weakening across all categories and implies that consumers are feeling the pain of inflation, rising interest rates and tighter credit conditions," Torres says. "Overall, this report points to a tapped-out consumer that is likely to weaken further into next year."

What Buffett's Big Move Could Mean for USB

It was a busy week of headlines on Wall Street, but one notable news story flew under the radar of all but the most devout Buffettologists. On Thursday, a regulatory filing revealed Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), Warren Buffett's holding company, slashed its stake in U.S. Bancorp (USB). 

Specifically, Berkshire sold 56% of its position in USB, bringing its stake in the big bank to 3.5% from 8.1%. The move shouldn't come as a major surprise given the stock's longer-term performance troubles. Besides, Buffett has been reducing exposure to financial stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio for some time – including selling smaller portions of his U.S. Bancorp stake in recent quarters. 

But what could this mean going forward? Read on as we take a closer look at Buffett's big move, and the impact this could have on USB stock.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, $303.20) cut its stake in longtime holding U.S. Bancorp (USB, $44.87) by more than half.

Buffett, who serves as Berkshire Hathaway's chairman and CEO, has been slashing his holding company's exposure to financial stocks – and bank stocks in particular – for years. And although the U.S. Bancorp position hasn't been immune to some recent downsizing in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio, Buffett has left it mostly intact.

That is, until now. 

Berkshire Hathaway sold 56% of its position in the nation's fifth largest bank by assets, a new regulatory filing revealed. Buffett's conglomerate now holds 52.5 million USB shares, or 3.5% of the regional lender's shares outstanding. That's down from an ownership stake of 8.1% prior to the sales. 

Berkshire Hathaway's USB stock was worth $2.4 billion as of Thursday's close, and now accounts for just 0.7% of the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio. That's down from 1.8% before Buffett slashed the stake. 

Berkshire, formerly the bank's largest shareholder, now drops to fourth place behind asset management giants Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors.

Buffett First Bought USB in 2006

Not to get sentimental or anything, but U.S. Bancorp is one of the oldest holdings in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Warren Buffett first bought shares in the nation's largest regional lender in the first quarter of 2006. And while he has always been tight-lipped about the USB position, Buffett's actions over the past few quarters have hinted that something like this might be in the offing.

After all, Buffett clipped Berkshire Hathaway's USB stake by 5%, or 6.6 million shares, in the second quarter of 2022. He also pared the stake in each of the first three quarters of 2021.

True, Buffett had been gradually reducing Berkshire Hathaway's exposure to USB. But those scissorings stood in stark contrast to what he's done with so many of Berkshire's other bank stocks.

Mostly, he's taken a hatchet to them.

In just a sample of moves, Berkshire Hathaway dumped what was left of its stake in Wells Fargo (WFC) in the first quarter of 2022, and exited positions in JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), PNC Financial Services (PNC) and Travelers (TRV) over the past couple of years. 

To be sure, Warren Buffett is by no means done with big bank stocks. Bank of America (BAC) is Berkshire Hathaway's second largest holding after Apple (AAPL). The nation's second largest bank by assets accounts for 10.2% of Berkshire's total portfolio value. 

Berkshire Hathaway also owns 55.2 million shares in Citigroup (C), a position that Warren Buffett initiated in the first quarter of 2022. At 0.8% of the portfolio, Citigroup is one of Berkshire Hathaway's 15 largest investments. 

Other financial sector stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio include American Express (AXP), Bank of New York Mellon (BK), Mastercard (MA), Visa (V) and Ally Financial (ALLY), among others.

What This All Means

The bottom line is that U.S. Bancorp stock is a long-time market laggard, and so perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised that Warren Buffett decided it was time to dramatically lighten up on the position. We'll learn more of what the world's greatest long-term investor has been up to when Berkshire Hathaway reports its third-quarter buys and sells on Monday, Nov. 14.

For now, all we can say for certain is that Berkshire Hathaway stock has been a market-beating buy this year. Operating earnings expanded 20% in the third quarter, helping to bolster BRK.B's case as one of the best stocks to buy for a bear market. 

It's also fair to assume that this isn't good news for USB stock. If Warren Buffett's recent history with big banks stocks offers any sort of guide, Berkshire Hathaway might be putting even more USB shares on the market soon.

A bit of advice about airline stocks: Resist them. I know it’s hard. Warren Buffett once joked about his own addiction, saying, “I am Warren, and I am an aeroholic.” Buffett’s mentor, the scholar and investor Benjamin Graham, was right from the start. He wrote in 1949 that it’s obvious that the airline industry will take off, but that doesn’t make airline stocks good investments. 

In the late 1980s, Buffett bought US Airways preferred shares anyway and made a little money for Berkshire Hathaway on the dividends, all the while disparaging his choice. In 2007, he wrote in his annual shareholder letter, “If a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down. Investors have poured money into a bottomless pit, attracted by growth when they should have been repelled by it.” 

But he remained attracted. In 2016, he started buying a chunk of nearly the entire U.S. industry, eventually paying $7 billion to $8 billion to buy roughly 10% of American Airlines Group, United Airlines Holdings, Delta Air Lines, and Southwest Airlines. By 2019, he had a small profit. Then COVID-19 struck, and he immediately pulled out, calling his investments “an understandable mistake.” A year later, the stocks had taken off, with United and American more than doubling between May 1, 2020, and May 1, 2021. Such is life with airline stocks. They’re suitable only for short-term market timers, and no one—not even Warren Buffett—can time the market, knowing precisely when to jump in and out.

That is just one of the lessons that airline stocks teach. More important is the question of why, as Ben Graham predicted, they have been so lousy in the long run. If you understand the deficiencies of airlines, you can apply the wisdom more broadly.

Begin with just how poorly these stocks have performed. US Global Jets (JETS) is an exchange-traded fund that holds airline shares, with about 10% of its assets in each of the four largest U.S. carriers, another 30% in smaller international lines, and the rest in related stocks such as Boeing and Expedia. If you insist on owning a diversified portfolio of airline stocks, this is the best choice, however flawed. Over the past five years, the ETF has lost an annual average of 12%, compared with a gain of 9.3% for the broad-market S&P 500 index. (Prices and returns are as of October 7; stocks I like are in bold.) 

US Global Jets was launched only in 2015. The returns of the large airlines over long periods are mostly horrendous as well. American, for example, has returned a negative 9.9% annualized over 15 years, meaning a $10,000 investment would have collapsed to roughly $2,100 over the period. United was a loser, too. Southwest, the best-run of the four largest lines, managed a return of 5.8%, compared with 8.0% for the S&P 500; Delta returned a paltry 4.1%. Since 1978, there have been well over 100 bankruptcy filings by airlines. Airlines suffered in many different years. United filed in 2002, Delta in 2005 and American in 2011. The field is littered with fabled names of the past: Pan American (bankrupt in 1998), TWA (1992 and 2002), Eastern (1989 and 1991) and Buffett’s US Airways (2002 and 2004). 

So what’s the problem? There are several. Airlines are:

Too competitive. In 1978, Congress deregulated the airlines, allowing companies to set their own fares and routes—a boon to consumers, but the beginning of fare wars (and bankruptcies, as we have seen) for the lines themselves. In 1980, the average round-trip U.S. airfare was $593; today, it’s $328. After adjustment for inflation, fares have fallen 85%. Meanwhile, 381 domestic airlines are competing for business, but regulators and Congress have been reluctant to allow mergers that would give the larger ones a shot at better profitability. For example, a JetBlue Airways bid to buy low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines, even if successful, would likely face severe headwinds getting government approval. 

Too commoditized. Domestic airlines have tried hard, but they can’t differentiate themselves from each other by brand. All that counts is price and timetable, so no airline can charge a premium.

Too subject to the vagaries of the price of oil. Fuel represents an average of about 20% to 25% of an airline’s total costs, and although companies can hedge the cost in the futures market, they are generally helpless to control this volatile expense. 

Too capital intensive and debt ridden. Airlines need to invest heavily in planes through either purchases or leases, which means either raising equity (it’s difficult to attract investors in an industry that’s not very profitable) or issuing debt. At the end of 2021, for every $1 of equity, Delta had $19 in debt; for United, the figure was $12. Overall, the industry has a debt-to-equity ratio of about five to one, compared with one to one for all listed U.S. companies.  

Too dependent on organized labor. According to Forbes, airlines represent “the most heavily unionized major U.S. industry. At American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, three of the four largest airlines, between 80% and 85% of the workforce is unionized. Nationwide, about 11% of the workforce is unionized.” In addition, post-COVID, airlines are facing a severe and persistent pilot shortage, as well as difficulty hiring flight attendants and other staff. This crisis has led to operational cutbacks and extra expenses for both compensation and training. Alaska Airlines, perhaps the best-managed of all the U.S. carriers, recently agreed to raise the pay of its pilots this year by 15% to 23%.

Too lacking in innovation. Planes today are actually slower than they were 40 years ago. It takes 19 minutes longer to fly from New York to Denver than it did in 1983. And that figure doesn’t count the additional time at the airport for security. Much of the innovation in flying has gone into fuel conservation—a big reason for slower planes—but technology has not done much to improve either the efficiency or the comfort of flight.

Too dependent on government. Unlike in Europe, nearly all the airports in the U.S. are run by state and local governments and thus are subject to the constraints of bureaucracy and politics. The antiquated air-traffic control system, run by a federal agency, has bedeviled airlines for decades. 

For all these reasons, I urge you to stay away from airline stocks—and to apply these same lessons to the rest of your investing. But the wider aviation sector does offer opportunities to play the powerful trend of more and more of the world’s population going up in the air. 

Consider Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), a diversified maintenance, leasing and cargo company whose shares have actually risen in the past year. It trades at a price-earnings ratio, based on forecasts for year-ahead profits, of 11. Shares of a similar maintenance firm, AAR (AIR), have doubled from their 2020 low but remain modestly priced. Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico (PAC), which I recommended in my column last month on emerging markets, operates five airports, mostly on the West Coast of Mexico. The stock has held up this year and yields 5.3%. All of these stocks are small, with market caps ranging from $1 billion to $6 billion. 

If you’re having a hard time shaking your aeroholism, I’ll suggest Panama-based Copa Holdings (CPA), which flies to 29 destinations, mainly in Latin America. Founded in 1947, Copa trades at a P/E of just 9, based on projected profits. Yes, it’s an airline, but just one. 

James K. Glassman chairs Glassman Advisory, a public-affairs consulting firm. He does not write about his clients. His most recent book is Safety Net: The Strategy for De-Risking Your Investments in a Time of Turbulence. He owns none of the securities mentioned here. You can contact him at James_Glassman@kiplinger.com.

Stocks gained ground Monday as investors looked ahead to a busy week of earnings and economic data, as well as Tuesday's highly anticipated midterm elections.

While the outcome of the midterms will certainly draw some interest from investors, the results of Thursday's consumer price index will likely be more important to markets. "It is still all about inflation and while this report might not be as hot as the last few, it still should show that rents and the core-service sector part of the economy are still hot," says Edward Moya, senior market strategist at currency data provider OANDA. "Inflation might not fall as quickly as some Fed members are expecting and that could support the idea that rates will stay higher for longer."

As for today's market, the S&P 500 Index rose 1.0% to 3,806 and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.9% to 10,564. However, it was the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+1.3% at 32,827) that led the path higher as blue-chip drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) gained 4.1% on news it will invest $3.5 billion in primary care provider VillageMD's acquisition of Summit Health, an owner of urgent care centers. WBA is VillageMD's largest shareholder with a roughly 53% stake.

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In other individual stock news, data mining firm Palantir Technologies (PLTR) slid 11.5% after the company's third-quarter profit fell short of the consensus estimate. On the flip side, Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) jumped 6.5% after the company said it is planning to start laying off thousands of employees later this week.

Behind Berkshire's Q3 Earnings

Also in the winner's circle today was Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). Shares of BRK.B rose 1.0% after the holding company released its third-quarter earnings report over the weekend. While the bear market took a toll on Berkshire's bottom line over the three-month period, its diversified income stream – which includes companies ranging from battery maker Duracell to healthcare liability insurance provider MedPro Group – was useful in propping up other sections of its financial statement. 

Among the highlights of BRK.B's Q3 results were a 20% year-over-year pop in operating income and higher-than-expected earnings per share. Read on to see what other notable developments occurred for Berkshire in Q3, and why BRK.B remains a top defensive stock in what has been a turbulent year for the broader equities market.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, $287.47) showed once again why it's one of the best stocks to buy for a bear market.

Berkshire Hathaway, of which Warren Buffett serves as chairman and CEO, shrugged off rising fears of recession and the impact of Hurricane Ian to post a 20% jump in third-quarter operating earnings. 

Conglomerates have fallen almost entirely out of fashion, but it's a corporate structure that's working wonders for BRK.B shareholders during our current period of heightened uncertainty. Berkshire Hathaway owns outright or has investments in scores of companies across a wide range of industries. That highly diversified income stream came in mighty handy in Q3.

Insurance underwriting, for example, booked an operating loss of $962 million in the quarter, hurt by the Atlantic hurricane season. Insurance-investment income, however, rose to $1.41 billion from $1.16 billion a year ago, helped by higher interest rates.

Meanwhile, profits at Berkshire Hathaway's utilities and energy businesses increased to $1.59 billion from $1.50 billion in last year's third quarter, while railroad earnings slipped to $1.44 billion from $1.54 billion a year ago.

Then there's everything else. Berkshire Hathaway's myriad businesses range from Kraft Heinz and Fruit of the Loom to Acme Brick Company and Nebraska Furniture Mart. Companies in which Warren Buffett's holding company has a controlling interest of at least 50% generated operating income of $3.25 billion, up from $2.71 billion a year ago. 

Berkshire Q3 Earnings Easily Top Estimates

Add it all up, and Berkshire Hathaway's operating income soared 20% to $7.76 billion in Q3. On a per-share basis, earnings came to $3.53, which easily topped Wall Street's estimate of $2.92, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

It's that sort of resilient operating performance that helps explain why BRK.B has been such a solid defensive stock in an otherwise dismal year for equities. Indeed, shares in Berkshire Hathaway were off just 3.9% for the year-to-date ended Nov. 4, beating the broader market by 17 percentage points. 

That said, the bear market has taken its toll on Berkshire's bottom line – at least as far as the accountants are concerned. Warren Buffett's company was forced to book a loss of $10.1 billion on its investment portfolio in Q3.

These are paper losses only, and reflect the highly concentrated nature of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio. Apple (AAPL), for example, which is BRK.B's largest holding at more than 40% of the portfolio, has lost about a fifth of its value in 2022. Other top holdings such as American Express (AXP) and Bank of America (BAC) are also down in 2022. 

Write-downs on its stock investments caused Berkshire Hathaway to post a net loss of $2.69 billion in Q3, vs. net income of $10.34 billion in the year-ago period. 

No one values Warren Buffett's performance based on net income, however. 

In other notable Q3 developments, Warren Buffett spent another $1.05 billion on stock buybacks. Berkshire Hathaway has now spent a total of $5.25 billion on share repurchases over the first nine months of the year. 

And yet the company still has a massive pile of cash on its hands. Berkshire Hathaway ended Q3 with almost $109 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. That's up from $105.41 billion as of June 30. 

BRK.B Stock Remains a Buy

Bottom line? Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway remains a bear-market buy.

Of the five analysts covering BRK.B, one rates the stock at Strong Buy, two say Buy and two have it at Hold, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. That works out to a consensus recommendation of Buy, with analysts citing valuation as a reason to be constructive on the name.

"We calculate BRK's shares are currently trading at around a 23% discount to its intrinsic value (29% as of 9/30)," writes UBS Global Research analyst Brian Meredith, who rates shares at Buy. 

Thanks in no small part to a bargain share price, the Street sees big returns in BRK.B's not-too-distant future. Analysts' average price target of $348.50 gives BRK.B implied upside of about 21% in the next 12 months or so. 

Warren Buffett has a seemingly insatiable appetite for shares in Occidental Petroleum (OXY, $62.11), but that doesn't mean retail investors should gorge on OXY stock as well.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, $269.58), of which Buffett serves as chairman and CEO, purchased another 6 million shares in the Houston-based integrated oil and gas firm between Sept. 26 and Sept. 28, according to a regulatory filing. At a cost of about $352 million, the additional shares increased Berkshire Hathaway's ownership to 21% of OXY's shares outstanding.

Buffett, who last bought OXY stock seven weeks ago, pounced after Occidental Petroleum shares lost more than a fifth of their value over the preceding month. 

BRK.B additionally owns $10 billion worth of 8% preferred shares, as well as 84 million warrants to purchase OXY stock. Occidental shares must trade above the warrants' exercise price of $59.62 for the warrants to be in the money. 

If warrants are included, all in, Berkshire owns nearly 30% of Occidental Petroleum. In August, BRK.B received regulatory approval to acquire up to 50% of the company. 

An OXY Acquisition Would Break Buffett's Record 

Analysts, traders and other interested parties can't help but speculate that Buffett is eyeing a buyout of OXY. Truist Securities analyst Neal Dingmann, for one, believes Buffett could acquire the energy giant outright after OXY receives upgrades to its credit ratings.

Not only would OXY fit well with the extant energy assets in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, the analyst has noted, but credit upgrades would lower Occidental Petroleum's cost of capital, allowing it to return more cash to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends. 

Don't forget: Buffett adores buybacks and dividends – as long as they're not courtesy of Berkshire Hathaway. (Berkshire is highly disciplined when it comes to share repurchases and famously does not pay a dividend.) 

If Berkshire Hathaway were indeed to acquire Occidental Petroleum, it would be Buffett's largest-ever deal by a wide margin. OXY's enterprise value, or its theoretical takeout price that accounts for both cash and debt, stands at $87.8 billion. Based on that figure, the 70% of OXY that Berkshire doesn't already own or have claim to via warrants would be worth $62 billion.

That's a very large acquisition by any measure, even before adding in any kind of premium. Such a deal would easily surpass the $44 billion in cash and debt-assumption Buffett paid for railroad operator BNSF in 2009.

OXY stock has more than doubled in 2022 – vs. a decline of more than 20% for the S&P 500 – thanks in no small part to Buffett's interest. True, higher year-over-year prices for crude oil and natural gas have made energy stocks rare winners this year, but the S&P 500's energy sector is up "only" 32% in 2022.

It seems safe to assume that a good portion of OXY's outperformance relative to its sector (and the fact that it's the best performing stock in the S&P 500 this year) can be attributed to others following Buffett's lead. (Rising short interest and short sellers being squeezed out of their positions might also be burnishing some of OXY's returns.)

But that doesn't mean retail investors should pile into OXY like Uncle Warren is.

Wall Street Says OXY Stock is a Hold

For one thing, as noted above, OXY already has more than doubled in the past nine months. The idea is to buy low, remember? 

Indeed, per regulatory filings, Buffett likes to go shopping for OXY when it's in the $50s and low $60s. Yet OXY's average closing price over the past three months comes to more than $64 – and that's after its recent swoon.

It's also the case that analysts, as a group, aren't particularly enthusiastic about OXY at current levels, giving it a consensus recommendation of Hold, per S&P Global Market Intelligence. Of the 26 analysts issuing opinions on the stock, five rate it at Strong Buy, three say Buy, 15 have it at Hold, two call it a Sell and one says Strong Sell.

Among other issues, analysts in the Hold and Sell camps worry about the way rising fears of global recession are punishing energy prices. 

Which brings us to a related concern: Employing OXY as a sort of call option on oil is in some sense "fighting the Fed." 

After all, Buffett is supposedly attracted to OXY, at least in part, because oil is a hedge against inflation. But hawkish central banks are moving aggressively to halt the march of fast-rising prices, risking recession – and demand for oil – in the process. 

For those reasons and more, BofA Securities is skeptical of Buffett's big bet on oil by way of Occidental Petroleum (if that is indeed what the Oracle of Omaha is up to). 

Analysts Say Investors Have Better Options Than OXY

"If OXY is a bullish oil view, there are better options given the stock's limited upside," writes analyst John Abbott, who rates shares at Neutral (the equivalent of Hold). "Recent outperformance may mean the risk from here is that BRK ends up bidding against itself."

Investors would also do well to remember that when it comes to making macro calls on energy, Buffett has been badly wrong before, the analyst notes. Berkshire made a large and ill-timed investment in ConocoPhillips (COP) in 2007, Abbott reminds his clients. Buffett later apologized for the move, which he pulled right before oil prices peaked. 

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Ultimately, the analyst's bottom line is pretty simple: OXY has outperformed to the point where oil-price bulls can find better value in select energy peers, such as ExxonMobil (XOM), the aforementioned COP and Hess (HES), among others. 

True, OXY still looks compellingly valued on a fundamental basis. The stock trades at just 7.3 times analysts' 2023 earnings per share (EPS) estimate. That's well below the stock's own five-year average of 23 times projected EPS, according to data from Refinitiv Stock Reports Plus. That's also an attractive multiple to pay for a company expected to generate average annual EPS growth of 9% over the next three to five years, per S&P Global Market Intelligence. 

And yet with the future course of energy prices now very much in doubt – and Buffett himself unwilling to pay more than something in the low $60s for OXY stock – all those analysts sitting on the sidelines make some unsettling points.

Don't Count on a Buffett Buyout of Occidental

For example, Berkshire has never landed a whale anywhere near as big as the Occidental Petroleum buyout would be. So don't be so quick to assume that total control is Buffett's end game.

It's also not necessarily good news that OXY stock still looks so cheap after its torrid 2022 run. As the saying goes, sometimes a cheap stock is cheap for a reason.

Finally, and most importantly for retail investors, it's worth wondering how much upside could possibly be left in a name that's up 115% for the year-to-date in a bear market.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, $302.82) took advantage of the market's second-quarter swoon to add to its stakes in Apple (AAPL, $173.16), Chevron (CVX, $156.80), Occidental Petroleum (OXY, $64.34) and a handful of other stocks, but the holding company didn't make any exciting or surprising new moves, a regulatory filing made late Monday revealed.

Chairman and CEO Buffett, along with co-portfolio managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, were once again net purchasers of equities during the three months ended June 30, although their pace of buying slowed considerably compared with Q1.

After subtracting sales, Berkshire spent $3.8 billion on stocks during the second quarter, down from net purchases of $41 billion in equities during the first three months of 2022. The S&P 500 lost more than 16% of its value during the second quarter. Suffice to say that Buffett and his lieutenants were once again greedy when others were fearful.

It's also worth noting that Buffett and his subalterns' buying stands in stark contrast to last year's second quarter, when Berkshire was a net seller of equities. And, for good measure, Buffett also spent $1 billion buying back Berkshire Hathaway stock during Q2.

Among the notable additions, Buffett bought another 3.9 million shares in Apple, which is Berkshire's largest position by a wide margin.

The company owned nearly 895 million shares in the iPhone maker, a stake worth $122.3 billion as of June 30. AAPL accounted for 41% of Berkshire's portfolio value at the end of Q2. That's down from 43% at the end of the first quarter due to a slump in Apple's share price.

Buffett has also been aggressively adding to Berkshire's stake in Occidental Petroleum. Berkshire bought an additional 9.6 million shares – worth about $530 million – in the integrated oil and gas firm in late June. The holding company again added to its stake in July, buying another 4.3 million OXY shares worth $250 million.

Including warrants, Berkshire owns roughly 30% of OXY's shares outstanding. Naturally, the conglomerate's large and growing position in OXY is fueling speculation that Buffett could be eyeing a buyout of Occidental Petroleum.

In some other notable purchases, Berkshire topped off existing stakes in Chevron, Celanese (CE, $116.22), Paramount Global (PARA, $26.55) and Ally Financial (ALLY, $35.68)

On the other side of Berkshire's ledger, the company exited what remained of its small stake in Verizon (VZ, $45.55), the only telecommunications stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Berkshire also closed out its short-lived position in Royalty Pharma (RPRX, $43.87).

In other stock sales, Berkshire slashed its stake in Store Capital (STOR, $29.24) by more than 50%. Buffett also reduced Berkshire's exposure to General Motors (GM, $39.40) and Kroger (KR, $47.52).

Ultimately, however, Buffett and his lieutenants had themselves a relatively quiet quarter, making mostly immaterial moves. The Berkshire Hathaway portfolio is highly concentrated, after all, with its top five holdings accounting for 75% of the total portfolio value. STOR, GM and KR don't really move the needle here.

And so although Berkshire went on a shopping spree in Q2, it mostly consisted of bargain hunting in a few of Buffett's favorite names. Investors looking for new stock or sector ideas based on the Oracle's Q2 moves didn't get much, if anything, to work with.

Warren Buffett went bargain hunting with both fists in the second quarter, scooping up billions of dollars worth of equities amid the broader market's steep selloff.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, $292.07) was a net buyer of stocks to the tune of $3.8 billion for the three months ended June 30. For good measure, Buffett, the conglomerate's chairman and CEO, also bought back $1 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway's own stock.

The S&P 500 lost more than 16% of its value during the second quarter. Suffice to say that Buffett was once again greedy when others were fearful.

Although Buffett slowed his pace of purchases of shares in both other companies and his own compared with Q1, the buying stands in stark contrast to Q2 2021, when Berkshire was a net seller of equities.

We won't know the full details of which stocks Buffett bought and sold during Q2 until Berkshire releases its Form 13-F on Aug. 15. But we do know that a sizable portion of that $3.8 billion in net purchases went to Occidental Petroleum (OXY, $59.01).

In the latter part of June, Berkshire bought an additional 9.6 million shares – worth about $530 million – in the integrated oil and gas firm. The holding company added to its stake in July, buying another 4.3 million OXY shares worth $250 million.

Including warrants, Berkshire owns nearly a third of OXY's shares outstanding. Naturally, the conglomerate's large and growing position in OXY is fueling speculation that Buffett could be eyeing a buyout of Occidental Petroleum.

Remarkably, as enthusiastically as Buffett went shopping for stocks in Q2, all that spending barely made a dent in Berkshire's cash pile. The company ended the quarter with $105.4 billion in cash, equivalents and short-term investments. That's only $847 million less than what Berkshire held in its coffers at the end of Q1.

Second-quarter insurance-investment income of $1.9 billion helped fatten Berkshire's wallet even as it continued to splurge on stocks.

Berkshire Q2 Earnings Show Big Investing Loss

Although Buffett may have delighted in the market's Q2 swoon for serving up quality stocks on sale, the general drawdown in equities dinged Berkshire's bottom line in a big way.

The company was forced to record an investing loss of $53 billion on its portfolio of securities. It's a paper loss only, and something that no investor in Berkshire Hathaway should lose sleep over.

BRK.B's equity portfolio is highly concentrated, after all. Its top five holdings – Apple (AAPL), Bank of America (BAC), American Express (AXP), Chevron (CVX) and Coca-Cola (KO) – account for about 75% of the entire portfolio value.

AAPL, which alone accounts for more than 40% of Berkshire's portfolio, shed more than a fifth of its price value in Q2. BAC and AXP each fell by about a quarter. Chevron, for its part, lost 11% during the second quarter. Indeed, of BRK.B's top-five holdings, only KO (+1.5%) delivered a Q2 gain.

But these are long-term holdings, at the whim of the accounting rules. Buffett urged investors not to overreact to what is essentially just some short-term bookkeeping.

"The amount of investment gains/losses in any given quarter is usually meaningless and delivers figures for net earnings per share that can be extremely misleading to investors who have little or no knowledge of accounting rules," Buffett said in a statement.

Berkshire Operating Income Tops Estimates in Q2

What should be of importance to holders of Berkshire's Class B shares is that the company's operating income came in at $4.21 per share. That easily topped analysts' average estimate of $3.34 per share, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

"The outperformance came from higher dividend and interest income, and stronger results at BH Reinsurance, BNSF and the manufacturing division, partially offset by worse results in Berkshire Energy and Geico," writes UBS Global Research analyst Brian Meredith, who rates the stock at Buy.

Meredith's bullishness is the mainstream view on the Street. Only four analysts cover BRK.B, per S&P Global Market Intelligence, but they give the stock a consensus recommendation of Buy.

Little wonder there. Not only has BRK.B been a strong defensive holding during the current bear market – shares were off 2.3% for the year-to-date ended Aug. 5 to beat the S&P 500 by nearly 11 percentage points – but it remains compellingly priced.

"BRK's shares are currently trading at around a 26% discount to its intrinsic value, which is more than the 22% average discount since BRK resumed share repurchases in the third quarter of 2018," Meredith writes.

If nothing else, the company's second-quarter results prove once again that when it comes to the best stocks to buy for a bear market, Berkshire Hathaway remains tough to beat.

Warren Buffett went wild with Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B, $309.29) checkbook during the first quarter, scooping up equities at his fastest pace since the Great Financial Crisis.

True, it took an epically bad start to the year for stocks and the worst inflation in four decades to lure Berkshire's chairman and chief executive back into the market.

But he's back, and in a big way.

The Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio scooped up $41.5 billion in net stock purchases in the first quarter. That's the most cash Buffett has splurged on equities in a quarter since 2008.

Contrast that with last year, when Berkshire was a net seller of equities in all four quarters of 2021.

In addition to spending another $3.2 billion buying back BRK.B shares and acquiring insurer Alleghany outright for $11.6 billion, Buffett and his lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs found plenty of other ways to make a serious dent in the conglomerate's cash pile.

Among the more notable moves, Buffett deployed serious financial resources into the energy sector in Q1, taking advantage of both rising oil prices and crude's properties as an inflation hedge. Elsewhere, Apple's (AAPL) Q1 stock skid prompted Buffett to add about $600 million to Berkshire's top holding.

And, of course, we all remember that Buffett bought a commanding 11.4% stake in PC and printer maker HP (HPQ).

We know what the greatest long-term investor of all time has been up to because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires investment managers with at least $100 million in assets to file a Form 13F quarterly report disclosing changes in share ownership. These documents add an important level of transparency to the stock market and give Buffett-ologists a bead on what the Berkshire chief is thinking.

When Buffett initiates a stake in some company, or adds to an existing one, investors read into that as a vote of confidence. But if he pares his holdings in a stock, it can spark investors to rethink their own investments.

Here's the scorecard for what Warren Buffett was buying and selling during the first quarter of 2022, based on Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filed on May 16, 2022, for the period ended March 31, 2022. You can check out the entire list of Buffett stocks here, or continue reading if you're most interested in Buffett's most recent transactions.

And remember: Not all "Warren Buffett stocks" are actually his picks. Some of Berkshire Hathaway's positions are handled by portfolio co-managers Weschler and Combs.

Current share prices are as of May 16, 2022. Holdings data is as of March 31, 2022. Sources: Berkshire Hathaway's SEC Form 13F filed May 16, 2022, for the reporting period ended March 31, 2022; and WhaleWisdom.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 57,985,263 (-5% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $3,326,615,000

Warren Buffett once again reduced Berkshire Hathaway's exposure to one of his more recent favorite stock picks in Q1. The holding company shed 3.4 million shares, or 5% of its stake, in supermarket operator Kroger (KR, $53.20).

The move followed another slight reduction in Q4, when Berkshire pared the stake by 350,000 shares, or less than 0.01%.

Kroger operates roughly 2,750 retail food stores operating under such banners as Dillons, Ralphs, Harris Teeter and its namesake brand, as well as 1,585 gas stations and even 170 jewelry stores under banners including Fred Meyer Jewelers and Littman Jewelers.

Buffett first bought the consumer staples play in the fourth quarter of 2019 and quickly built on the position over the following two years. Shares are up by 120% on a total return basis since Oct. 1, 2019, vs. a total return of 43% for the S&P 500.

More impressively, KR generated a total return of 27% for the year-to-date through March 31 – a period during which the broader market's total return came to -4.6%.

Perhaps Buffett was content to take a little off the top of what has been a winning position in an otherwise dismal year for equities.

The KR position now accounts for 0.8% of Berkshire's portfolio value, down from 0.9% at the end of 2021.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 14,754,811 (-39% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $431,283,000

Berkshire slashed its position in Store Capital (STOR, $27.35) by 39%, or 9.7 million shares in Q1.

The position, which Berkshire initiated in the summer of 2017, was always something of an unusual one. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) – a way to invest in real estate without owning the actual assets – have never been big among Buffett stocks.

Store invests in single-tenant properties including chain restaurants, supermarkets, drugstores and other retail, service and distribution facilities. That is to say, Store is a bet on brick-and-mortar retail, which is thought to be in permanent decline.

Buffett, however, spied value – and he spied it for quite some time. Store Capital CEO Christopher Volk told CNBC that Buffett studied the REIT for three years before taking his position.

STOR stock suffered through a rough first quarter, losing nearly 15% of its value while underperforming the broader market by about 10 percentage points.

Store accounted for only 0.25% of Berkshire's equity portfolio at the end of Q4. That's now down to 0.12%. Any further decline in the share price will be even less material to BRK.B's returns.

Berkshire still remains important to Store, however. Even with just 5.4% of the REITs shares outstanding – down from 8.7% at Q4's end – Berkshire remains its third largest shareholder after Vanguard and BlackRock.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 1,496,372 (-82% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $58,299,000

Berkshire continued to unwind its relatively short-lived involvement with Royalty Pharma (RPRX, $40.26) in Q1, dumping 82% of its stake.

Given the size and nature of the investment, it was most likely handled by Ted Weschler or Todd Combs.

Whomever was responsible, he appears to have had an abrupt change of heart at the end of 2021. Berkshire cut the position by 34% in Q4, just three months after initiating a stake of 13.1 million shares in Q3.

Berkshire has been shedding many of its bets in the healthcare sector for the past several quarters, and the tiny position in RPRX was not spared.

Royalty Pharma, as the name might indicate, is focused on acquiring biopharmaceutical royalties. It doesn't research or develop drugs – it helps provide capital for the companies that do. Through that model, RPRX has gotten a piece of blockbuster drugs such as AbbVie's (ABBV) Imbruvica, Biogen's (BIIB) Tysabri and Pfizer's (PFE) Xtandi.

To be sure, RPRX was never a significant holding to begin with. It now accounts for just 0.02% of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio, down from 0.1% at the end of Q4.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 1,380,111 (-99% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $70,303,000

Berkshire all but eliminated its bet on Verizon Communications (VZ, $49.04), the only telecommunications stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Buffett sold off 99% of the stake, leaving Berkshire with just 1.4 million shares worth $70.3 million at quarter's end.

Verizon had all the making of a long-term Buffett holding when Berkshire initiated the stake during the fourth quarter of 2020. The blue-chip dividend payer with ample free cash flow looked right at home. In one fell swoop, the telco accounted for a sizable 3.2% of Berkshire's total equity portfolio value.

Buffett even added to the VZ holding the following quarter, no doubt encouraged by Verizon's growth prospects in the new era of 5G networking.

But although dividends and defense never go out of style, the thesis on Verizon has changed in the intervening years. Rival T-Mobile US (TMUS) is challenging it for market share gains, for one thing. And more than a few Wall Street analysts fret about Verizon's rising costs.

Whatever Buffett's reasons for selling, Verizon is now but a rump position in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio, accounting for a measly 0.02% of its value.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares sold: 675,054
• Value of stake: $0

Warren Buffett is at long last officially done with Wells Fargo (WFC, $42.21).

WFC, which had been in the Berkshire portfolio since 2001, is no more. Buffett sold off the remaining 675,054 shares Berkshire inexplicably still held onto after years of selling off the position.

Wells Fargo was once considered among the most treasured of Buffett stocks. But it turned into a weight around the Oracle's neck starting in 2016, when numerous scandals bubbled to the surface. The bank opened millions of phony accounts, modified mortgages without authorization and charged customers for auto insurance they did not need.

Buffett eventually started selling at the start of 2018. However, for several quarters, most of those sales appeared to be routine parings of the position to keep it below a regulatory 10% maximum ownership threshold for banks.

Then came the hacksaw:

• Q4 2019: Buffett dumps more than 55 million shares (~15% of the position).
• Q2 2020: Buffett jettisons another 85.6 million shares (~26%).
• Q3 2020: Down go another 85.6 million shares (~46%).
• Q4 2020: Berkshire unloads 75 million shares (~58%).
• Q1 2021: Buffett makes his deepest cut yet, selling off 51.7 million shares, or 98.7% of the remaining position, all but eliminating WFC from the portfolio.
• Q1 2022: The end.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares sold: 5,202,674
• Value of stake: $0

As noted above, Berkshire reversed course on the healthcare sector some time ago, but he really accelerated his exits in Q1.

Buffett sold off the holding company's remaining stake in Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY, $76.91), dumping 5.2 million shares. The move was largely telegraphed three months ago when Berkshire cut its BMY stake by 76% during the fourth quarter of 2021.

Berkshire Hathaway first bought BMY in Q3 2020 and immediately added to the position in Q4 of that year. But the interest didn't last long. And this past quarter's move comes as part of a general retreat by Berkshire on bets in the pharmaceutical industry.

In the case of BMY, its late 2019 acquisition of biotech giant Celgene was thought to be a big part of Buffett's attraction to the stock. The deal brought in a pair of blockbuster multiple myeloma treatments: Pomalyst and Revlimid, the latter of which also treats mantle cell lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndrome.

A long track record of successful acquisitions has kept the pharma company's pipeline primed with big-name drugs over the years. Buffett, however, seems to have reset his expectations for BMY – and the broader sector.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares sold: 3,033,561
• Value of stake: $0

AbbVie (ABBV, $155.47) is yet another example of Berkshire's total rethinking of its big pharma bets. The holding company sold off its remaining 3 million shares in ABBV in Q1.

Buffett first bought AbbVie during the third quarter of 2020 as part of a wider bet on the pharmaceutical industry. But Berkshire has all but given up on the position, gutting it over the past four consecutive quarters.

The pharma giant is best known for blockbuster drugs such as Humira and Imbruvica, but analysts are also optimistic about the potential for its cancer-fighting and immunology drugs.

ABBV seemed like a classic Buffett stock in certain respects – namely, the biopharma firm's storied dividend history. AbbVie is an S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat, by virtue of having raised its dividend every year for 50 years. The most recent hike – an 8.5% increase to the quarterly payment to $1.41 per share – was declared in October 2021.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 890,923,410 (+0.4% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $155,564,138,000

Warren Buffett absolutely adores Apple (AAPL, $145.54), and he took a three-day dip in the share price to add to Berkshire's holdings.

He wanted even more.

"Unfortunately the stock went back up, so I stopped," Buffett told CNBC following Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders meeting in May. "Otherwise who knows how much we would have bought?"

At 43% of the portfolio, AAPL is Berkshire's largest position by far, and Buffett wouldn't have it any other way.

"I don't think of Apple as a stock," Buffett has said about Apple. "I think of it as our third business."

And it might as well be. Berkshire is Apple's third-largest investor with an 887 million-share stake representing about 5.5% of all shares outstanding. Only Vanguard and BlackRock – giants of the passively managed index fund universe – hold more Apple stock.

The Oracle of Omaha has only occasionally dabbled in technology stocks. But he bought Apple with two fists, and he's more than happy to discuss his ardor for AAPL. As he has said more than once on CNBC, he loves the power of Apple's brand and its ecosystem of products (such as the iPhone and iPad) and services (such as Apple Pay and iTunes).

"It's probably the best business I know in the world," Buffett said a year ago. "And that is a bigger commitment that we have in any business except insurance and the railroad."

This has been an exceptionally fruitful investment for Buffett. AAPL shares have gained more than 430% on a price basis alone since the end of Q1 2016, when Berkshire initiated its stake. The broader market has barely doubled in price over the same span.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 62,045,847 (+3% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $2,713,886,000

Buffett apparently went bargain hunting in General Motors (GM, $37.10) stock in Q1, upping Berkshire's stake by 3%.

Shares in the automaker lost a quarter of their value over the first three months of 2022, which improved both GM's dividend yield and its stock's valuation.

Buffett first took a stake in General Motors in early 2012, and became increasingly constructive on the world's fourth-largest auto manufacturer by production. He raised BRK.B's stake in 2018, 2019 and 2020, but then went into reverse and cut exposure as recently as 2021.

General Motors has always looked like another classic Buffett value bet. After all, there are fewer American brands more iconic than GM. He also has sung the praises of CEO Mary Barra on several occasions. And the stock perennially trades at crazy-cheap multiples of expected earnings.

GM is still a relatively small position, accounting for less than 1% of Berkshire's portfolio, but the recent buying, if nothing else, shows Buffett hasn't given up on the venerable company.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 2,170,000 (+19% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $707,615,000

Berkshire gave a large vote of confidence to RH (RH, $279.83) in Q1, which many readers know as Restoration Hardware.

The holding company upped its position by 19%, or 2.2 million shares. Berkshire's total holdings were worth $708 million as of March 31. Berkshire, which was already positioned in home furnishings retail via its Nebraska Furniture Mart subsidiary, initiated the RH position Q3 2019, and added to it by 1% at the end of last year.

RH operates 104 retail and outlet stores across the U.S. and Canada. It also owns Waterworks, a high-end bath-and-kitchen retailer with 14 showrooms.

While brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled mightily over the past few years thanks in part to the rise of e-commerce, RH has found success catering to the upper crust. And that success continued throughout the COVID pandemic as Americans, forced to work from home, decided to spend on improving their environs.

It's hard to tell whether this was an Oracle of Omaha buy, or a project of one of his lieutenants, Ted Weschler or Todd Combs. Buffett has been mostly mum on RH. Still, the stake fits broadly with the Oracle's worldview. Buffett stocks tend to be bets on America's growth, which certainly includes housing-related industries.

With 10.1% of RH's shares outstanding, Berkshire Hathaway is the company's second largest stockholder.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 7,722,451 (+264% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $539,336,000

In a position most likely handled by Ted Weschler, Berkshire more than tripled its stake in Formula One Group (FWONK, $60.22). The purchase of an additional 5.6 million shares brings the conglomerate's total holdings up to 7.7 million shares worth $539 million as of March 31.

Berkshire initiated the stake in Q4 – a minuscule one of just 2.1 million shares, worth $134 million at the time. Even now FWONK accounts for only 0.15% of Berkshire's portfolio value.

FWONK holds commercial rights for the Formula One World Championship – a nine-month long motor race-based competition in which teams compete for the constructors' championship and drivers compete for the drivers' championship.

Formula One Group also is a subsidiary of John Malone's Liberty Media Corporation, making FWONK yet another of several Berkshire investments tied to the billionaire businessman. Weschler, in his pre-Berkshire career as a hedge fund manager, invested in a number of Malone's businesses.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 159,178,117 (+316% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $25,918,973,000

It had been nearly impossible to get a bead on Buffett & Co.'s holdings in the energy sector over the past couple years.

Consider some of Uncle Warren's moves:

• Q4 2019: Sold off most of his Phillips 66 (PSX) position, but added more than 150% to his Occidental Petroleum (OXY) stake, and nearly 40% to a Suncor (SU) stake.
• Q1 2020: Fully exited Phillips 66.
• Q2 2020: Bailed out of his Occidental position, but upped Suncor by 28%.
• Q4 2020: Initiated a position in Chevron (CVX, $173.01), but dropped more than a quarter of the Suncor position.
• Q1 2021: Exited Suncor, sold more than half the Chevron position.

But now, after making another small trim to CVX during the second quarter of 2020, Buffett has come back with vengeance. He upped Berkshire's Chevron stake by 24% in the third quarter, by 33% in the fourth quarter, and now by more than 300% in Q1.

Chevron, a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is flush with cash thanks to skyrocketing prices for crude oil. Russia's invasion of Ukraine helped global benchmark Brent crude oil futures hit nearly $140 a barrel at one point during the first quarter.

The energy sector is now awash in cash, and companies such as Chevron are returning this windfall to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.

Make no mistake: there are few things Buffett likes more than dividends and buybacks.

It also helps that oil is a solid hedge against inflation. With prices rising at the fastest pace in four decades, cash is trash. Berkshire's massive pile of cash, equivalents and short-term investments is much better put to use in an asset like Chevron under such conditions.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 64,315,222 (+338% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $5,152,292,000

We know that either Ted Weschler or Todd Combs first bought shares in video game publisher Activision Blizzard (ATVI, $78.00) in Q4. Buffett said so.

But it was the Oracle of Omaha himself who upped the position by 338% in Q1.

The original purchase was simply great timing. In mid-January, Microsoft (MSFT) agreed to pay $68.7 billion, or $95 a share in cash, for ATVI. At the time the deal was announced, the software titan was paying a premium of roughly 30% to the video game maker's most recent closing price.

BRK.B, however, bought more than 14.6 million shares in ATVI – worth $975.2 million as of Dec. 31 – during the fourth quarter at an estimated average price of $66.53 per share. That was a quick score.

As for the latest purchases, that's a bet by Buffett that the deal will indeed close. It's an arbitrage play, and we know this because Buffett said as much at Berkshire's annual meeting.

"It is my purchases, not the manager who bought it some months ago," Buffett said about the latest Activision buys. "If the deal goes through, we make some money, and if the deal doesn't go through, who knows what happens."

Activision shareholders approved the company's sale to Microsoft, but some investors are betting the deal could be scuttled by antitrust regulators.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 4,780,000 (+466% from Q4 2021)
• Value of stake: $387,180,000

Warren Buffett very much kept in line with some of his other investments in home retail when he initiated a stake in Floor & Decor (FND, $69.80) in the third quarter of 2021, then added to the stake in Q4.

But he really put an exclamation point on the investment in Q1 2022, adding another 3.9 million shares. FND went from a negligible 0.03% of Berkshire's portfolio to a more significant 0.1%.

Floor & Decor sells hard surface flooring and related accessories primarily through 133 company-operated warehouse store formats.

It remains a small position, to be sure, but it still fits nicely with some of Buffett's other holdings and investments.

Berkshire, for example, has been building a position in home goods retailer RH since the third quarter of 2019. And he's made no secret of his love for Berkshire Hathaway's wholly owned subsidiary Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Floor & Decor thus appears to be a way to play the housing market, albeit with a somewhat oblique, Buffett-style angle.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 8,969,420
• Value of stake: $389,990,000

Ally Financial (ALLY, $38.73) shareholders no doubt appreciated getting Warren Buffett's vote of confidence. The stock is off roughly 30% over the past 52 weeks, including a 19% drop year-to-date and a 9% decline in the first quarter, when Berkshire Hathaway set up camp.

Ally Financial has actually done business for more than a century, though for most of that time it operated as General Motors Acceptance Corporation. It rebranded as Ally in 2010, then went public in 2014. Its main businesses are Ally Bank, an online bank that offers traditional products such as savings and checking services, CDs and IRAs; and Ally Invest, which provides securities-brokerage and investment-advisory services.

After a couple of years of shedding many of his bank holdings, Buffett appears ready to get back into the space. That said, the Ally stake isn't anything to gawk at – the roughly $390 million position amounts to just a tenth of a percent of Berkshire's overall equity holdings.

It's not an insignificant chunk of Ally Financial, however. Berkshire's 2.7% ownership stake makes it the financial institution's fifth-largest shareholder.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 420,293
• Value of stake: $620,034,000

It's possible that Buffett saw something familiar and comforting in the shares of insurance and investment firm Markel (MKL, $1,325.11).

At more than a thousand bucks a pop, MKL stock isn't as easy for traders to push up and down as your garden-variety stock. That's precisely why Warren Buffett has never split Berkshire's A-class shares, whose $460,000 price tag would be enough to buy your average-priced home in Massachusetts with enough left over to park a couple new Mini Coopers in the garage.

Markel is a three-pronged financial institution. Its three major business lines are insurance (insurance, reinsurance, fronting and insurance-linked securities); investing; and Markel Ventures. The latter is a growing portfolio of companies, such as luxury handbag maker Brahmin, homebuilder Eagle and architectural product maker Panel Specialists.

Buffett merely dipped a toe into this position during the first quarter of 2022, buying about 420,000 shares, or $620 million worth of the financial stock. That's less than two-tenths of a percent of the equity portfolio, though it's a 3.1% position in Markel – good enough to make the Oracle its fifth-largest shareholder.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 2,921,975
• Value of stake: $894,504,000

Buffett exited a pair of pharma/biotech holdings during the first quarter and heavily sold out of a third. But that doesn't mean he's done with the healthcare sector.

McKesson (MCK, $327.83) offers a number of healthcare solutions – including supply chain management, retail pharmacy, community oncology and specialty care – in 14 countries. For instance, its pharmaceutical distribution business serves 40,000 retail chains, long-term care providers and other customers, while its medical-surgical supplies business gets hundreds of thousands of products – everything from bandages to exam tables – to hospitals and doctor's offices across the nation.

McKesson is one of the few Buffett stocks that was bought on the way up. MCK shares surged by 23% during the first quarter and are currently up 32% year-to-date.

That said, Berkshire didn't buy too many of its shares. The new position comes to just about $900 million, or a quarter of a percent of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio, putting it around the middle of the pack. Buffett, however, becomes a top-10 shareholder, as his 2.9 million shares represent a nearly 2% stake.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 7,880,998
• Value of stake: $1,125,958,000

Berkshire became a top-five shareholder in Celanese (CE, $144.68) in Q1, initiating a position that accounts for 7.3% of the chemical company's shares outstanding.

The holding is less meaningful for Berkshire, however, comprising just 0.3% of its equity portfolio. With 7.9 million shares worth $1.1 billion, the relatively small size of the CE investments suggests that it was likely the doing of either Weschler or Combs.

Either way, the commanding stake in the firm known for acetic acid and vinyl acetate monomer gives Berkshire its only position in the materials sector.

In addition to giving Berkshire exposure to a part of the market that it had lacked, Celanese has strong long-term growth prospects and a commitment to returning cash to shareholders.

Analysts forecast the company to generate average annual earnings per share growth of more than 17% over the next three to five years, for one thing. Meanwhile, CE has raised its dividend annually for 14 years. Even better, from Berkshire's point of view, is the company's history of share repurchases.

Buffett generally prefers buybacks to dividends not only because they're more tax efficient (dividends get taxed twice), but because they increase an investor's claim on earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 68,947,760
• Value of stake: $2,606,915,000

Paramount Global (PARA, $28.02) is a mass media and entertainment organization that resulted from 2019's merger between Viacom and CBS. Its properties include Paramount Pictures' film and television studios, CBS, The CW, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, CMT and Showtime.

It also gives Buffett three more streaming properties – Paramount+, Showtime OTT and Pluto TV – to add alongside Apple's (AAPL) Apple TV+ and Amazon.com's (AMZN) Amazon Prime.

Admittedly, Paramount+ is something of a second-tier streamer. Its 62 million subscribers pales in comparison to the likes of Netflix's (NFLX) 221 million subscribers or Amazon Prime's 149 million.

While it's not a traditional value category, PARA very much looks like a Buffett value bet. Paramount's shares trade at just 9 times estimates and at a price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of around 0.8 (anything less than one is considered undervalued). Shares now yield more than 3% at current prices, too.

Buffett dug in with both hands, too. The $2.6 billion buy-in during the first quarter makes Berkshire Paramount's top shareholder with an 11.3% stake. That said, PARA isn't a huge presence in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio at a weight of 0.7%.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 55,155,797
• Value of stake: $2,945,319,000

After Uncle Warren ended his longtime relationship with Wells Fargo, he rekindled things with another old financial flame – Citigroup (C, $47.46) – entering a new stake roughly 20 years after he exited the last one.

Financial stocks broadly failed to gain any traction during the first quarter of 2022, but Citigroup really struggled, declining by roughly 12% between the start of the year and March 31. However, that dip might have been the push Buffett needed to enter the nation's fourth-largest bank by assets.

Citigroup has been the weakest of the Big Four banks over the past year, losing more than a third of its value over that time. That has in turn made Citigroup look like quite the value play; shares currently trade at just 7 times next year's earnings estimates and now yield north of 4%.

This was a relatively big splash by Berkshire, too. The nearly $3 billion position immediately puts Citigroup within the holding company's top 15 positions. It also translates into a 2.8% stake Warren Buffett the fourth-largest shareholder in the bank, behind fund giants Vanguard (8.5%), BlackRock (8.3%) and State Street (4.7%).

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 104,476,035
• Value of stake: $3,792,480,000

Buffett dipped into Berkshire's massive cash pile in Q1 to initiate a commanding position in HP (HPQ, $37.51). And this big new bet on a PC and printer maker appears to be another classic Buffett value play.

HPQ generates a steady and ample stream of free cash flow (FCF) – the cash left after expenses, capital expenditures and financial commitments have been met – or an average of nearly $4 billion a year over the past five years.

Industry analysts expect that FCF number to increase and – most importantly – to flow into investors' pockets.

Free cash flow supports dividends, and it's no secret Buffett adores dividends. HPQ, for its part, has been not only a generous dividend payer, but a dividend grower. The company has increased its payout annually for 13 years. The most recent hike came in November – a 29% increase in the quarterly disbursement to 25 cents per share.

True, the market for PCs and printers is hardly overflowing with growth prospects. But HPQ has a solid track record of slow but steady gains on the top line. Wall Street analysts see this incremental revenue growth continuing for years, all helped by recent strategic acquisitions.

And then there's HPQ's valuation, which Buffett appears to have found irresistible.

Buffett, with 11.4% of HP's shares outstanding, snatched up a boring but dependable cash machine at a bargain price.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 136,373,000
• Value of stake: $7,737,804,000

Warren Buffett has been absolutely hoovering up stock in Occidental Petroleum (OXY, $67.72).

In a flurry of Q1 purchases, Berkshire bought more than 136 million OXY shares, or 14.6% of the integrated oil and gas company's shares outstanding.

The stake, worth $7.7 billion as of March 31, coincides with the ongoing melt-up in energy prices, which was sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Global benchmark Brent crude oil futures hit nearly $140 a barrel at one point during the first three months of the year.

It also helps that oil tends to be a good hedge against inflation, which is rising at a pace not seen in four decades.

Like the rest of the industry, OXY is flush with cash, which it is returning to shareholders through dividends and buybacks – both of which Buffett loves.

The Occidental common shares Buffett purchased only added to its already substantial exposure to the energy firm, which includes $10 billion worth of 8% preferred shares, as well as 84 million warrants to purchase OXY stock. Occidental shares must trade above the warrants' exercise price of $59.62 for the warrants to be in the money.

Berkshire is Occidental's largest shareholder by a wide margin. Vanguard, with a 10.9% ownership stake, comes in a distant second.

The potential for the U.S. to slip into recession was the topic du jour Monday as stocks kicked off the week with a wobbly, uneven session.

Over the weekend, former Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein told CBS' Face the Nation that recession was "a very, very high risk factor." That opinion was met by a number of other calls Monday morning.

Wells Fargo Investment Institute, for instance, says "our conviction is that the chances of an outright recession in 2022 remain low" but believes odds are growing that 2023 could see an economic contraction. UBS strategists say the chances are different depending on where you look – their global economists say "hard data" points to a sub-1% chance of recession over the next 12 months, but the yield curve implies 32% odds.

"There's no crystal ball to predict what's next, but historical trends can come into play here. With the [S&P 500] closing 15% below its weekly record, there's only been two times in the past 60-plus years that the market didn't fall into bear territory after a similar drop," adds Chris Larkin, Managing Director of Trading at E*Trade. "This doesn't mean it's bound to happen, but there is room for potential downside."

Larkin says to keep an eye on major retail earnings this week – which will kick off in earnest with Walmart's Tuesday report – to get a pulse check on the American consumer.

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Monday itself was a fairly quiet affair. Exxon Mobil (XOM, +2.4%) and Chevron (CVX, +3.1%) were among a number of plays from the energy sector (+2.7%) that popped after U.S. crude oil futures jumped another 3.4% to $114.20 per barrel.

Twitter (TWTR, -8.2%) shares dropped after Tesla (TSLA, -5.9%) CEO Elon Musk spent the weekend questioning how much of Twitter's traffic comes from bots. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said the move feels more like a "'dog ate the homework' excuse to bail on the Twitter deal or talk down a lower price." TWTR stock has now given up all its gains since Musk announced his stake in the social platform.

The major indexes finished an up-and-down session with mostly weak results. The Dow Jones Industrial Average managed to eke out a marginal gain to 32,223, but the S&P 500 declined 0.4% to 4,008, while the Nasdaq Composite retreated 1.2% to 11,662.

Also worth noting: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway will file its quarterly Form 13F soon. Check back here tonight as we examine what Buffett has been buying and selling.

Other news in the stock market today:

• The small-cap Russell 2000 closed out the session with a 0.5% dip to 1,783.
• Gold futures gained 0.3% to settle at $1,814 an ounce.
• Bitcoin was off 1.6% to $29,551.92 (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m.)
• JetBlue Airways (JBLU, -6.1%) ramped up its hostile takeover attempt of Spirit Airlines (SAVE, +13.5%) on Monday, urging SAVE shareholders to vote against a buyout offer from fellow low-cost air carrier Frontier Group Holdings (ULCC, +5.9%). JBLU last month offered to buy Spirit Airlines for $33 per share – a premium to the $21.50 per share ULCC offered in February – but SAVE's board of directors rejected the bid citing concerns over regulatory approval. JBLU followed up in early May with an "enhanced superior proposal," including paying a $200 million, or $1.80 per SAVE share, reverse break-up fee should regulators block the deal.
• Warby Parker (WRBY) fell 5.3% after the eyeglass maker reported a loss of 30 cents per share in its first quarter. This was much wider than the per-share loss of 3 cents the company reported in the year-ago period and missed the consensus estimate for breakeven on a per-share basis. Revenue of $153.2 million also fell short of analysts' expectations. WRBY did maintain its full-year revenue guidance of $650 million to $660 million. "We remain cautiously optimistic on shares as WRBY continues to show ability to grow the top line, open new stores, and is recession resistant as a lower cost option for non-discretionary spend," says CFRA Research analyst Zachary Warring (Buy). "We see the company leveraging SG&A to become profitable in the second half of 2022."

Check Out Europe's Dividend Royalty

If you're seeking out more stable opportunities amid an uncertain U.S. market … well, the rest of the world is admittedly looking pretty shaky, too. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few morsels worth a nibble.

BCA Research notes that while there's negative news around the globe, "European benchmarks already discount a significant portion of the negative news." And looking ahead, inflation there is expected to peak over the summer "as the commodity impulse is decelerating" – that should help stagflation fears recede and help European shares.

Graham Secker, Morgan Stanley's chief European and U.K. equity strategist, chimes in that his firm remains "overweight [European] stocks offering a high and secure dividend yield."

We've previously highlighted our favorite European dividend stocks, which on the whole tend to produce higher yields than their U.S. counterparts.

But we'd also like to shine the spotlight on Europe's twist on an American income club: the Dividend Aristocrats. The S&P Europe 350 Dividend Aristocrats have somewhat different qualifications than their U.S. brethren, but in general, they've proven their ability to provide stable and growing dividends over time.

Read on as we look at the European Dividend Aristocrats.

Rapidly rising prices are on the radar for virtually everyone in America – even the billionaire class. Indeed, Warren Buffett himself has his eyes on inflation.

Buffett finally whipped out Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B, $318.99) checkbook in a big way earlier this year, spending tens of billions of dollars in a matter of weeks.

All it took was a historically bad start to the year for stocks – or at least, that's how things would appear at first glance.

But stumbling share prices, while certainly critical, aren't the whole story here. Warren Buffett clearly has been monitoring America's rampant inflation, which appears to be a key factor driving his renewed appetite for equities.

And make no mistake: Berkshire's chairman and CEO is hungry.

Berkshire Buys Like There's No Tomorrow

Buffett has embarked on a shopping spree the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Financial Crisis. During the first quarter …

• The Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio scooped up $41.5 billion in net stock purchases in the first quarter. That's the most cash Buffett has splurged on equities in a quarter since 2008
• The Oracle of Omaha spent another $3.2 billion buying back BRK.B shares.
• Berkshire also announced that it would spend $11.6 billion to acquire insurer Alleghany outright – a deal that should close during the fourth quarter.

True, the market's terrible start to 2022 no doubt played a starring role in Buffett's largesse. The S&P 500 tumbled as much as 13% from its all-time high at one point in Q1. Buffett, as patient as any investor when it comes to waiting for bargains, at long last pounced – and did so with surgical precision.

Buffett put nearly 30% of Berkshire's massive cash pile to work in equities last quarter. And according to Bespoke Investment Group, almost 80% of his purchases came during the weakest part of the quarter.

That's remarkable timing.

Contrast that with 2021, when the S&P 500 generated a total return (price appreciation plus dividends) of nearly 29%, or its third best run since 1997. Berkshire, however, used the market's outstanding performance as a chance to lighten up on stocks. Indeed, the holding company was a net seller of equities in all four quarters of 2021.

Suffice to say that Warren Buffett is pretty adept at the whole "buy low, sell high" thing. When investors are fearful, he more often than not gets greedy.

Warren Buffett Makes the Most of Inflation

But there's a second (and perhaps more urgent) factor driving Buffett's lavish spending on stocks right now: Inflation.

"It swindles almost everybody,” Buffett told the Berkshire faithful at the company's annual meeting in Omaha this year.

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Remember, Warren Buffett rather famously didn't go shopping when the market lost a third of its value in the pandemic crash of 2020. So while he hasn't been this active buying stocks in ages – it's not just because stocks are in a slump.

It's because of inflation.

When prices are rising at the fastest pace in four decades, cash is trash. That helps explain Buffett's biggest Q1 binge, says David Kass, a professor of finance at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and noted Buffett expert.

Berkshire raised its stake in Chevron (CVX, $162.49) to $26 billion, up from a modest $4.5 billion at the beginning of the year. That's a big deal. The integrated energy major and Dow Jones Industrial Average stock is now Berkshire's fourth-largest holding.

And it's not like Buffett scooped up those CVX shares when they were on sale. The stock traded at all-time highs in Q1.

In addition to a number of other attractive attributes, Warren Buffett also sees an inflation hedge in Chevron, Kass says. And even if oil prices level off or reverse trend, a stake in CVX is better than sitting in cash and equivalents.

"Chevron has a large stock buyback program and pays a cash dividend of 3.5%," Kass says. "That makes it a relatively safe cash alternative. Instead of earning essentially zero on Treasury bills, why not earn a dividend yield and a buyback yield that combined probably come in somewhere in the high single digits?"

The same calculus of falling stock prices plus rising inflation can be seen in a number of Buffett's recent buys.

Earlier this year, Berkshire disclosed a series of purchases in Occidental Petroleum (OXY, $59.24). Buffett's conglomerate is now the integrated oil and gas firm's largest investor, with 14.6% of its shares outstanding.

"Chevron and Occidental, to me, they make a whole lot of sense," Kass says. "Oil, I believe, is a good hedge against inflation."

This stocks-down-inflation-up dynamic helps explain the sudden and stark reversal in Berkshire's balance sheet.

When inflation is all but dormant, as it was for more than a decade until last year, Warren Buffett was content to accumulate cash. From 2016 to 2021 – a period in which Buffett bemoaned the fact that relentlessly rising asset prices made it nigh impossible to find whale-sized acquisitions – Berkshire's cash hoard essentially doubled, from $75 billion to about $147 billion.

Watching the cash pile up, however, was preferable to destroying capital by overpaying for assets in an aging bull market.

But now, with share prices falling and consumer prices rising, putting cash to work in more attractively priced companies that pay dividends and buy back their own stock is almost irresistible.

For example, Buffett bought $600 million additional shares in Apple (AAPL, $159.48) following a three-session decline in the stock in Q1. The iPhone maker recently authorized a $90 billion share repurchase program and disburses more than $14 billion in dividends annually.

Or take the case of HP (HPQ, $37.9). Hefty buybacks and dividends – not to mention a cheap valuation – no doubt factored into Buffett's purchase of a major stake in the computer and printer maker in April, Kass notes.

Topping off Buffett's buying was an $11.6 billion outlay to outright acquire insurer Alleghany. This Warren Buffett move wasn't tied to inflation – it just seemed a fruitful way to put more of that cash to work. Kunal Sawhney, CEO of independent equity research firm Kalkine, says Alleghany makes a perfect strategic fit with Berkshire's extant insurance businesses.

Even after Buffett's Q1 buying extravaganza, Berkshire retains $106 billion in its arsenal of financial firepower. If stocks keep struggling amid intense inflationary pressures, expect Buffett to make even more bold bets and splashy buys.

Warren Buffett dipped into Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B, $344.71) massive cash pile for the third time in the past month, initiating a commanding position in HP (HPQ, $34.91).

And while some of the stocks Berkshire has been buying and selling recently might leave folks scratching their heads, this big new bet on a PC and printer maker looks very much like a classic Buffett value play.

Berkshire late Wednesday disclosed a stake of 121 million shares in HP, worth $4.2 billion as of that day's closing price. HPQ stock predictably popped on the news, adding as much as 18% at one point soon after Thursday's opening bell.

Fair enough. There's nothing quite like a major vote of confidence from the world's greatest long-term investor. With 11.4% of HP's shares outstanding, Berkshire Hathaway is now the company's largest stockholder, and by a good margin.

Asset management giant Vanguard, which specializes in passive investment products and therefore must own loads of stocks by default, comes in second with 10.6%, or 111.5 million shares.

Suffice to say Buffett made a statement with this move.

Warren Buffett's Shopping Spree Continues With HP

Berkshire's chairman and CEO has for years bemoaned the fact that rising asset prices have made it tough to find attractive acquisition targets or bargain stocks. The S&P 500 generated a total return of nearly 29% last year, and yet Buffett's holding company was a net seller of equities in all four quarters of 2021.

The result is that Berkshire's cash hoard has nearly doubled over the past five years. The company ended 2021 with $146.7 billion in cash, equivalents and short-term investments. In 2016, that figure stood at $74.9 billion.

But the market's rough start to 2022 has apparently changed Buffett's calculus – and prompted him to go shopping.

In early March, Berkshire disclosed a series of investments in Occidental Petroleum (OXY). BRK.B is now the oil and gas firm's largest shareholder, with 14.6% of OXY's shares outstanding. A couple of weeks later, Berkshire struck a deal to acquire insurer Alleghany (Y) for $11.6 billion.

The HPQ investment isn't in the same league as those other deployments of cash. But it does have the kind of attributes Buffett has exploited for long-term outperformance many times in the past.

Why Buffett Scooped Up HPQ

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway portfolio comprises scores of stocks, but it's actually a highly concentrated one. Apple (AAPL) alone accounts for 46% of the portfolio's total value. Indeed, the top four holdings – AAPL, Bank of America (BAC), American Express (AXP) and Coca-Cola (KO) – come to 74% of Berkshire's equity holdings.

Then there's HPQ. At just 1.2% of Berkshire's portfolio, the position, while material, isn't going to make too much of an immediate impact.

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Let compounding work its magic, however, and HPQ could be a savvy value play for the long haul.

For one thing, HPQ generates a steady and ample stream of free cash flow (FCF) – the cash left after expenses, capital expenditures and financial commitments have been met – or an average of nearly $4 billion a year over the past five years.

Industry analysts expect that FCF number to increase and – most importantly – to flow into investors' pockets.

"We think HPQ is on pace to generate annual FCF of at least $4.5 billion, with all being returned to shareholders," writes CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino, who rates shares at Hold.

Free cash flow supports dividends, and it's no secret Buffett adores dividends. HPQ, for its part, has been not only a generous dividend payer, but a dividend grower. The company has increased its payout annually for 13 years. The most recent hike came in November – a 29% increase in the quarterly disbursement to 25 cents per share.

Not Exactly a High Growth Play …

True, the market for PCs and printers is hardly overflowing with growth prospects. But HPQ has a solid track record of slow but steady gains on the top line. Wall Street analysts see this incremental revenue growth continuing for years, all helped by recent strategic acquisitions.

The latest such deal came in March when HP agreed to acquire Poly – which combines the old Plantronics and Polycom – for $3.3 billion. The deal bolsters HPQ's offerings in headsets and cameras, as well as the video conferencing and collaboration software that goes with such gear. It's essentially a bet on permanent changes to work in the post-pandemic era.

"HP and Poly expect to deliver a complete ecosystem of devices, software and digital services to create premium workplace experiences and productivity enhancements in the age of hybrid and work-from-anywhere," writes Argus Research analyst Jim Kelleher (Buy). "In this new normal, HPQ appears well positioned with its strong personal system (PC) and printing franchises."

… But Solid Margins, Cheap Stock

In addition to synergistic acquisitions and slow-but-steady revenue growth, HPQ is reliably profitable. Buffett can pretty much count on the company delivering 20% gross margins and 10% operating margins.

And then there's HPQ's valuation, which Buffett appears to have found irresistible. Before shares jumped on the Berkshire news, HPQ traded at just 8.1 times analysts' 2022 earnings per share (EPS) estimate. That's despite the Street's forecast for average annual EPS growth of 27% over the next three to five years.

Heck, according to data from Refinitiv Stock Reports Plus, HPQ stock was trading at a discount of 16.5% to its own five-year average on an expected earnings basis.

In a word, it was cheap.

Lastly, Buffett famously places a premium on experienced management. CEO Enrique Lores, who has served the company in a myriad of roles for three decades, appears to ably check that box.

The Bottom Line

Buffett snatched up a boring but dependable cash machine at a bargain price.

Retail investors tempted to copy the move might want to wait for a pullback, however. Price is what you pay; value is what you get, as Buffett likes to say. Sure, HPQ could still be a bargain at current levels, but it's sure not the same bargain that Berkshire just caught.

Stocks' positive momentum faded to start the new week after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is prepared to move "expeditiously" towards tighter monetary policy in order to fight inflation.

"We will take the necessary steps to ensure a return to price stability," Powell said in prepared remarks for a speech today at the National Association for Business Economics.

In addition to taking a more hawkish tone, the Fed chief warned that the war in Ukraine could continue to disrupt global supply chains and raise commodities prices at a time when inflation is already "too high."

The consumer discretionary sector took the hardest hit today, giving back 0.8%. Energy, on the other hand, jumped 4.0%, as U.S. crude futures surged 7.1% to $112.12 per barrel amid reports the European Union is considering a ban on Russian oil.

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As for the major benchmarks, the Nasdaq Composite ended the day down 0.4% at 13,838, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.6% to 34,552 and the S&P 500 Index finished 0.04% lower at 4,461 – though a burst of late-day buying power brought all three indexes off their session lows.

Other news in the stock market today:

• The small-cap Russell 2000 fell 1% to 2,065.
• Gold futures eked out a marginal gain to settle at $1,929.50 an ounce.
• Bitcoin backtracked 2.5% to $41,176.50. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m.) "The market is going to stay in a trading range until we see crypto regulation clarity in the U.S.," says Charlie Silver, CEO of Permission.io, a cryptocurrency-enabled provider of e-commerce permission advertising. "The bull market will return when trillions of institutional dollars looking for a home have a regulatory green light."
• Boeing (BA, -3.6%) was the worst Dow Jones stock after a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger jet crashed earlier today. There were 132 people on board the aircraft, which has a strong safety record. China's Civil Aviation Administration said it will investigate the crash.
• Alleghany (Y) surged 24.8% after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, +2.1%) said it would buy the insurer for $11.6 billion in cash, or $848.02 per Y share. Berkshire's acquisition of Alleghany marks the holding company's biggest buyout since 2016.
• In other M&A news, private-equity firm Thoma Bravo said it will buy cloud-based connected planning platform Anaplan (PLAN, +27.7%) for $10.7 billion in cash, or $66 per PLAN share. The deal is expected to close in the first half of this year, and Anaplan CEO Frank Calderoni will maintain his role.

Another Inflation Hidey-Hole

We've spent much of the past few months touting the ways in which investors can protect their portfolios from inflation and the rising interest rates that come with it.

Among the many corners of the market that can help mitigate the effects of both higher prices and rising rates are reliable dividend payers, such as the Dividend Aristocrats, or defensive plays like consumer staples stocks.

But CFRA Research's thematic research team recently identified a group within the latter sector that looks particularly attractive right now: beverage stocks.

"Similar to other consumer staples companies, soft drink equities tend to be more defensive, value/income-oriented, have relatively stable sales and earnings, strong margins and free cash flow, as well as attractive dividends, which these companies have a history of increasing regardless of economic conditions," the CFRA team says.

Indeed, current market conditions make the investment case for beverage stocks "the strongest it has been in some time," they add.

Investors seeking safety may want to take a look at these top-rated names, which could be a great place to hide amid rapidly rising prices.

Warren Buffett put some of Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B, $342.41) massive cash pile to work on Monday, striking a deal to acquire insurer Alleghany (Y, $676.75) for $11.6 billion.

The purchase adds to Berkshire's already sprawling core of insurance operations, which include Geico, General Re and National Indemnity Company.

Berkshire will pay $848.02 a share in cash for Alleghany, or a 29% premium to its average stock price over the last 30 days. The property and casualty reinsurer and insurer will operate as an independent subsidiary after the deal closes, which is slated for the fourth quarter of 2022.

Shares in Alleghany jumped more than 26% at one point soon after Monday's opening bell.

"Berkshire will be the perfect permanent home for Alleghany, a company that I have closely observed for 60 years," Buffett said in a press release.

Berkshire's chairman and CEO has for years bemoaned the fact that rising asset prices have made it hard to find "whale-sized" acquisition targets at attractive valuations. With a market capitalization of around $774 billion and a 2022 revenue estimate of $295.9 billion, it takes a lot to move the needle on BRK.B stock or the company's bottom line.

Rising asset prices have also changed Buffett's calculus when it comes to Berkshire's enormous stock portfolio. The holding company was a net seller of equities in all four quarters of 2021.

The result is that Berkshire's cash hoard has nearly doubled over the past five years. The company ended 2021 with $146.7 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. In 2016, that figure stood at $74.9 billion.

The Alleghany deal puts at least a slight dent in the company's cash pile, and pretty much qualifies as a needle-mover. At nearly $12 billion, it's Berkshire's biggest acquisition since 2016, when it purchased Precision Castparts for $37 billion, including debt.

Kunal Sawhney, CEO of independent equity research firm Kalkine, says Alleghany makes a perfect strategic fit with Berkshire's extant insurance businesses. And, importantly, it comes at a time of rapid, industry-wide transformation in the post-COVID-19 era.

Consumers are increasingly turning to online search for insurance products, Sawhney notes. That's leading to higher conversion rates at a time when demand for products has been rising for two years and counting.

"Insurance companies are adapting to changes, expanding their online channels to meet customer needs," Sawhney says. "Hathaway recognizes this. It knows that Alleghany's participation in the insurance businesses can provide the momentum it needs."

The Alleghany news comes hard on the heels of a different sort of milestone for Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway's Class A shares (BRK.A) passed the $500,000 mark for the first time in history on March 16.

It's also worth noting that the Alleghany deal is hardly the first time Buffett has opened his wallet recently. Berkshire Hathaway has been guzzling up Occidental Petroleum (OXY) stock in March. At last count, BRK.B held 14.6% of the oil company's shares outstanding. The stake of 136.4 million shares is worth about $8.3 billion at current levels.

OXY gives Berkshire Hathaway's stock portfolio increased exposure to the energy sector at a time of rapidly rising oil prices.

Any bet that could offer the trifecta of value, dividends and inflation protection would appear to be a slam dunk pick in today's particularly tricky market. Well, it just so happens that such names exist, and they hail from a somewhat surprising sector: beverage stocks.

Believe it or not, beverage stocks – or shares in companies that make carbonated refreshments, sports drinks, coffees, teas, juices, energy drinks and more – could be an investor's best friend amid a turbulent 2022, says CFRA Research.

"With interest rates expected to rise and inflation near a 40-year high, we view the investment case for soft drink equities as the strongest it has been in some time," writes CFRA's thematic research team.

Before you dismiss this argument as a case of market strategists imbibing something a bit stronger than Diet Coke, let's hear them out.

Beverage stocks, like most consumer staples names, have a lot of what the market most wants this year. They're value stocks, for one thing, which are currently back in fashion at the expense of last year's growth darlings.

Beverage stocks also are defensive names, with relatively stable sales and earnings, strong margins and free cash flow. Those attributes, in turn, support attractive dividends, which soft drink companies have a history of increasing, regardless of economic conditions.

"As such, we view soft drink equities as good inflation hedges due to their ability to leverage brand value to successfully raise prices," the CFRA team concludes.

Of course, not all beverage stocks are created equal, and CFRA Research calls out four names in particular as top Buys.

Have a look at CFRA Research's best beverage stocks to buy below. We'll recap the investment case for each one, and check in briefly with what the rest of Wall Street says about the picks too.

Share prices and other market data as of March 18. Analysts' recommendations courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Stocks are listed alphabetically.

• Market value: $260.5 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.9%
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: Buy

Coca-Cola (KO, $60.10), one of the best dividend stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, has long been a Warren Buffett favorite. Indeed, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) first bought KO back in 1988, and it remains the holding company's fourth largest position today.

The fizzy drinks maker also happens to be as dependable a dividend grower as they come. This member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats has hiked its payout for 60 consecutive years.

Coca-Cola was hit hard by the pandemic, which shut down restaurants, bars, live events and myriad other venues serving its vast portfolio of sodas, juices, teas, sports and energy drinks. Those sales are now coming back.

The resurrection in revenue prompted CFRA Research analyst Garrett Nelson to upgrade KO to Buy from Hold in January, citing the company's "fundamentals and strong underlying momentum from the rebound in on-premise sales and robust pricing environment."

The Street generally concurs with Nelson's view, giving shares a consensus recommendation of Buy, with high conviction. Twelve analysts rate KO at Strong Buy, six say Buy and eight call it a Hold, per S&P Global Market Intelligence.

• Market value: $53.6 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.0%
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: Buy

Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP, $37.81) boasts the best-selling system for making single-serve coffee in North America, and it's among the market leaders in K-cup pods (Green Mountain and Original Donut Shop brands). Of course, the company is also known for beverages such as Dr Pepper and Snapple.

The investment thesis on KDP hinges on a combination of solid financial footing and the habits customers formed during the pandemic era, bulls say.

"KDP is a company that has dramatically improved its balance sheet and has benefited enormously from the surge in ready-to-drink coffee sales since the onset of COVID-19 due to its Keurig segment," CFRA's Nelson notes.

A lighter balance sheet will allow the company to return more cash to shareholders, the thinking goes. And, indeed, KDP authorized a $4 billion stock buyback program in October.

Meanwhile, the stickiness of work-from-home trends should continue to drive strong sales of ready-to-drink java, the analyst adds.

Nelson's colleagues are more mixed in their opinions. Seven analysts rate KDP at Strong Buy, four say Buy, eight call it a Hold and one has it at Sell. Nevertheless, their consensus recommendation works out to Buy.

• Market value: $42.7 billion
• Dividend yield: N/A
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: Buy

The investment thesis on Monster Beverage (MNST, $80.59) is both compelling and fairly easy to sum up.

"Monster Beverage generated industry-leading gross margins in fiscal 2020, has a net debt-free balance sheet, and is focused on energy drinks, one of the fastest-growing beverage categories prior to the pandemic," writes CFRA's Nelson.

If there's a downside to MNST in the current market environment, it's that the company doesn't pay a dividend. It does, however, have a history of returning cash to shareholders through aggressive share repurchases.

It's also hard to quibble with the stock's potential for price appreciation. Analysts' average target price of $100.29 gives MNST implied upside of 24% in the next 12 months or so. At CFRA, Nelson's target of $110 gives the stock implied upside of 36%.

Lastly, Monster Beverage is a possible acquisition target. "With the company reportedly in merger discussions with Constellation Brands (STZ), we remain buyers of MNST shares," Nelson writes.

The Street's consensus recommendation comes to Buy, with solid conviction. Nine analysts call it a Strong Buy, four say Buy and 10 have it at Hold, per S&P Global Market Intelligence.

• Market value: $225.2 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.6%
• Analysts' consensus recommendation: Buy

Long-time income investors probably know that PepsiCo (PEP, $162.79) is a dividend-growth stalwart. This member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats has lifted its distribution annually for 49 years and counting.

Meanwhile, those with shorter horizons – such as tactical investors and traders – might want to keep an eye on PEP too. An AI stock-picking platform with a strong track record identifies PEP as one of the best stocks to watch for both outperformance and low risk over the next 30 to 90 trading sessions.

Looking farther ahead, CFRA Research praises PEP for its profit prospects, as well as the multi-faceted nature of its operations, among other factors.

"PepsiCo is a stock we continue to like due to its above-average growth profile and beverage/food and snack diversification, which it has benefited from throughout the pandemic," Nelson writes.

The company's high-margin Frito-Lay and Quaker Foods businesses have particularly benefited from stay-at-home trends, the analyst adds, and that's helped blunt the impact of softer beverage sales.

The Street is mostly bullish on PEP, too, giving it a consensus recommendation of Buy. Of the 22 analysts covering the stock tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, seven rate it at Strong Buy, four say Buy, 10 have it at Hold and one says Sell.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, $326.60) is having a great year in a down market, and on March 16, it quietly hit a milestone. The company's far-lesser-traded Class A shares closed above $500,000 for the first time in their history.

That’s right. A piece of Buffett’s holding company costs more than a cool half-million per share.

BRK.A, which crossed $5,000 way back in 1989, first broke $500,000 on an intraday basis on March 14, but closed just shy of that level. Two days later, however, it held on. The Class A shares have attained such a shocking dollar amount because Buffett has never split the stock. That’s intentional. The high price of admission to the Class A shares helps attract long-term investors and discourages speculation, is Buffett's thinking, and he told shareholders as much in 1984.

Of course, most investors still have access to Warren Buffett’s investing acumen via the more accessible Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares, which currently trade around $335 each. The Class B shares, created in 1996, remain at reasonable levels thanks to the 50-to-1 split required to facilitate Berkshire's acquisition of railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 2010.

Happily, investors in both share classes are enjoying considerable outperformance amid an otherwise painful start to 2022. BRK.A was up 11.5% for the year-to-date through March 16, closing its record-breaking day at $504,036. BRK.B added 12.5% over that span.

The S&P 500? It’s off by 8.6%.

Berkshire Shares Are Long-Term Winners, Too

The fact that Class A shares have never split explains their half-million-dollar price tag, but that shouldn't diminish Buffett's role in getting them to their lofty level. Folks don't call him the greatest long-term investor of all time for nothing.

For one thing, Berkshire Hathaway is the 12th best stock of the past 30 years, according to Hendrik Bessembinder, a finance professor at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Under Buffett's stewardship, BRK.A and BRK.B created $504.1 billion in wealth for shareholders, or 11.7% annualized, between January 1990 and December 2020.

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Longer term, Buffett's performance is pretty much untouchable. Berkshire's return more than doubled that of the S&P 500 since 1965, notes Argus Research – or a compound annual growth rate of 20.1% vs. 10.5% for the index.

Putting it perhaps most evocatively is Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices. He notes that if you had invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway in 1968 and left it untouched for 50 years, your nut would have grown to $85 million.

Buffett's unparalleled investment returns and his refusal to split the Class A shares make them by far and away the most expensive stock in the world, per data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. For context, Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Sprüngli AG (LDSVF) comes in a distant second, with a home exchange price of about 108,200 Swiss francs (or $115,078).

Here are some other ways to put BRK.A's $504,000 stock price in perspective. A single Berkshire Class A share is …

• 1.23 times the median sales price of a house in the U.S. (~$408,100).
• 2.5 times the average annual wage of an American CEO (~$198,000).
• 130,208 McDonald's hamburger Happy Meals.

To be sure, there's nothing special about BRK.A closing above $500,000 a share – not even psychologically. Only 615,160 shares are available for trading, average daily volume is 1,940 shares, and, uh, they cost around $500,000 a pop. It's not like retail investors are going to chase these prices higher on surging volume.

But it's a fun milestone to note and a tribute to the power of buy-and-hold (and hold and hold and hold) investing. And then some.

Warren Buffett has been absolutely hoovering up stock in Occidental Petroleum (OXY, $56.15). In a flurry of recent purchases, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, $325.34) bought 91 million OXY shares, or 9.8% of the integrated oil and gas company's shares outstanding.

The addition to the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio coincides with the ongoing melt-up in energy prices, which was sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Global benchmark Brent crude oil futures briefly topped $130 a barrel in the wee hours of Monday trading, and have gained about 30% over the past month.

The common shares Berkshire just purchased add to its already substantial exposure to the energy firm, which includes $10 billion worth of 8% preferred shares, as well as 84 million warrants to purchase OXY stock. Occidental shares must trade above the warrants' exercise price of $59.62 for the warrants to be in the money.

Buffett received the warrants as an equity "kicker" when he bought the preferred shares in 2019. The funding provided by Buffett helped Occidental win its $55 billion bidding war against Chevron (CVX) to acquire Anadarko Petroleum.

If nothing else, Buffett's buying spree has clearly contributed to OXY stock's dramatic outperformance of late. Berkshire Hathaway purchased more than 60 million OXY shares between March 2 and March 4 – and OXY stock jumped more than 28% over those sessions.

Indeed, on March 4 alone, Berkshire picked up a total of 34 million shares. Occidental closed the session up 17.6%, on abnormally heavy volume. For the year-to-date, OXY stock has gained 94% vs. a 35% increase for the S&P 500 energy sector.

Occidental Petroleum isn't the only recent Buffett move intended to expand BRK.B's exposure to the energy sector. Berkshire Hathaway upped its stake in Chevron by 33% in the fourth quarter of 2021, as well. The holding company held 38.2 million shares in the Dow component as of Dec. 31, a stake which is currently worth $6.1 billion.

Both CVX and OXY get consensus Buy recommendations from Wall Street analysts, but they have significantly greater optimism regarding the former's prospects than the latter's.

Of the 29 analysts issuing opinions on CVX stock tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 13 call it a Strong Buy, seven say Buy and nine rate it at Hold.

As for OXY, the Street's view is decidedly more mixed. Ten analysts call it a Strong Buy, three say Buy, 11 have it at Hold, one calls it a Sell and two say Strong Sell.

A lot of money continues to flow into hedge funds and other billionaire money managers – even as those hedge funds underperform and sprint to shrink their positions.

Consider this: The Goldman Sachs Hedge Industry VIP ETF (GVIP, $73.98) – which tracks the performance of an index composed of roughly 50 U.S.-listed stocks that appear in the top 10 holdings of prominent hedge funds – is in a bear market for 2022, off 23% year-to-date. Actual hedge-fund performance has been more mixed, with the Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index outperforming the market in January and February but falling behind in March.

Investors, however, are happy to keep throwing money at billionaire investors. According to data provider HFR, hedge funds enjoyed $19.8 billion in net inflows during the first quarter of 2022. That’s the highest amount since Q2 2015.

However, hedge funds largely sat on that money during the first quarter of 2022. According to WhaleWisdom.com, first-quarter Form 13F filings (required quarterly reports of holdings by large institutional investors) showed that investors sold almost three times as many shares as they bought – an indication that investor conviction was heading lower.

Consider this from Bloomberg:

"'A plummeting equity market and the even worse performance of the most popular long positions have led to the worst start of a year on record for hedge fund returns,' [Goldman Sachs] strategists led by Ben Snider wrote in a note on Friday. 'As a result of these struggles, in recent months hedge funds have accelerated the reduction in leverage and rotation away from growth stocks they began several quarters ago,'" Bloomberg reported on May 23.

Studying which stocks asset managers are taking their capital out of is an interesting exercise for many retail investors. That's largely because of the "why." In some cases, these billionaire investors are selling to take profits. In other situations, they could be rotating assets into more appropriate investments based on the current economic environment.

Here are 20 stocks the billionaire set sold off over the past few months. Every quarter, we look at 13F filings from institutional investors to discover not only some of the billionaire set's favorite stock picks – but also which investments they're souring on.

Data is as of June 6. Stake values and portfolio weights are as of March 31. Data is courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence, YCharts, WhaleWisdom.com, Forbes and regulatory filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, unless otherwise noted.

• Market value: $468.1 billion
• Billionaire investor: Jennison Associates
• Shares sold: 7,037,626 (25%)

New York-based hedge fund Jennison Associates sold 25% of its stake in Nvidia (NVDA, $187.86) in the first quarter, reducing its weight from 5.14% to 4.12%. However, Jennison still finished the quarter owning 20.5 million shares of NVDA, which makes it the fifth largest position in its portfolio.

Jennison first acquired Nvidia shares in Q1 2016. According to WhaleWisdom.com, it has paid an average of $40.09 a share over the years. Nvidia shares were priced at $272.86 as of the March 31 close.

Of the big institutional investors holding Nvidia, Jennison was the third-largest seller of the stock in the first quarter, behind only FMR (11.3 million shares sold) and Norges Bank (21.3 million shares sold). Norges Bank manages the Norwegian government's global pension fund.

While Nvidia shares are down 36% year-to-date, they are up roughly 400% over the past five years. As such, it's probable that Jennison sold the semiconductor stock to lock in some of its profits.

Should NVDA's share price continue to fall in 2022, the hedge fund will likely add to its position at some point. Nvidia's too good a company not to be invested for the long haul.

• Market value: $3.1 billion
• Billionaire investor: Apollo Global Management
• Shares sold: 2,935,220 (27%)

Apollo Global Management's 13F reported that it had $21.1 billion invested at the end of March in 362 stocks. The investment advisory arm of the alternative asset manager sold out of 96 stocks during the quarter and reduced its position in 98 others. One of those that it pared its stake in was Jackson Financial (JXN, $35.50), a Michigan-based provider of annuities and other retirement products.

Jackson was Apollo's ninth-largest holding at the end of Q1 2022, despite reducing its position by 27% over the three-month period. Apollo first acquired JXN shares in the fourth quarter of 2021, paying an average price of $41.83 per share. JXN stock traded between $35 and $47 throughout the first quarter, so if Apollo made money on its share sale, it didn't make much.

As far as billionaire investors selling JXN shares during the first quarter, Apollo sold the second-largest amount, behind only Sessa Capital, which unloaded 3.9 million shares. While Apollo reduced its weighting in JXN to 1.58% from 1.91% in Q1, Seesa slashed its Jackson weighting to 1.91% from 9.84%.

In September 2021, Jackson Financial was spun out of Prudential Financial (PRU). Shareholders of the parent company received one JXN share for every 40 PRU shares they owned. Prudential retained a 19.7% economic interest. As of Dec. 31, 2021, it still owned 18.4% of the financial firm.

• Market value: $11.8 billion
• Billionaire investor: Theleme Partners
• Shares sold: 1,585,000 (32%)

Of all the hedge funds and investment firms covered in this article, Theleme Partners is by far the most focused. At the end of December, the London-based firm had almost $6 billion invested in just 11 positions. One of those was Alcoa (AA, $64.02).

Interestingly, Theleme had almost half its assets invested in put options – a bet the share price will go down – on the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM), which tracks the performance of 2,000 small-cap U.S. stocks. Its next largest holding was Moderna (MRNA) at almost $1.3 billion. AA was the hedge fund's fourth-largest holding at the end of December, accounting for 4.9% of the portfolio.

By the end of March, Theleme's 13F was down to $3.1 billion. It appears the hedge fund went heavily to cash. The entire iShares put position was sold out in the first quarter.

As for Alcoa, Theleme first initiated a position in the aluminum giant in Q3 2021, paying an average price of $48.94 a share. At the end of March, AA closed at $90.03 (though it's down a third in the two months since). We chalk up Theleme's 32% reduction to profit-taking.

• Market value: $50.9 billion
• Billionaire investor: Permian Investment Partners
• Shares sold: 1,762,856 (44%)

There's been a lot of profit-taking so far in 2022. Devon Energy (DVN, $77.05) is no exception. In the first quarter, Permian Investment Partners reduced its position in the Oklahoma City oil & gas producer by 44%. Devon's weighting in Permian's $834-million portfolio fell to 15.44% at the end of March from 18.05% at the end of December. Still, it remains the hedge fund's second-largest position, behind utility stock NRG Energy (NRG).

Interestingly, despite the name Permian, the New York-based hedge fund owns just two other energy stocks – Cameco (CCJ) and Golar LNG (GLNG). Permian first initiated a stake in Devon in Q1 2021, paying an average price of $23.18 a share. One year later, the stock is up more than 200%.

That's quite the timing.

Permian's portfolio was made up of 18 positions at the end of March. Its top five holdings accounted for 77.15% of its portfolio. The five holdings were from five different sectors: utilities, energy, industrials, transportation and healthcare.

Devon reported first-quarter earnings on May 2. It beat on both the top and bottom line. In the quarter, the oil and gas company generated a record $1.3 billion in free cash flow – the money left over after a company has paid its expenses, interest on debt, taxes and long-term investments needed to grow its business.

It doesn't appear there's anything to get in the way of more record-setting results for Devon, either, except a possible recession in 2023. In the meantime, Permian will most likely hang on to most of its DVN shares.

• Market value: $450.6 billion
• Billionaire investor: GQG Partners
• Shares sold: 6,967,149 (61%)

GQG Partners finished the first quarter with $43.1 billion invested in 72 managed 13F securities. This was after the investment advisor reduced its holdings in 17 stocks over the three-month period, including its stake in Visa (V, $212.94). With the sale of almost 7 million shares, Visa's weighting in the Ft. Lauderdale advisory firm's large portfolio was reduced from 6.07% as of Dec. 31, 2021, to 2.22% at the end of March.

The billionaire investment firm first acquired a position in the Dow Jones stock in Q4 2016. It's estimated to have paid an average price of $199.65 per V share. The investment advisor sold 61% of its Visa shares in the first quarter, most likely to preserve profits. It also could be over concerns of a potential economic slowdown.

At the end of April, Piper Sandler analyst Chris Donat downgraded both Visa and Mastercard (MA) to Neutral from Overweight (the equivalents of Hold and Buy, respectively) on concerns that inflation could result in slowing discretionary spending and less cross-border activity in the future, Visa's bread and butter.

"While we think that MA and V have beautiful business models, these models operate in the broader global economy," Donat wrote in a note. He adds that both credit card companies have wide exposure to Europe, which could put pressure on transactions, profits and valuation multiples should the region enter a recession next year.

• Market value: $68.0 billion
• Billionaire investor: Chase Coleman III (Tiger Global Management)
• Shares sold: 10,012,324 (63%)

Tiger Global Management, the hedge fund run by Chase Coleman III, sold out of 83 stocks in the first quarter and reduced its position in 46 others. In contrast, it bought just two new stocks and added to 21 others.

Among those that Tiger Global Management reduced its position in during the first quarter were a number of Chinese stocks listed on U.S. exchanges. One of those was Shanghai-based e-commerce platform Pinduoduo (PDD, $53.75). The billionaire investor's hedge fund cut its position in PDD by 63%, dropping its weighting from 2.0% at the end of 2021 to 0.87% at the end of March. It finished the first quarter owning 5.8 million shares of PDD.

Investors remain concerned that many of these firms will be delisted due to the Chinese government standing in the way of U.S. regulators for more than a decade. U.S. regulators are required by law to inspect the auditors of Chinese companies in order to be listed on domestic exchanges. In order to avoid a massive delisting of Chinese stocks in the U.S., Beijing will likely need to reach a settlement with Washington at some point in the near future.

Tiger made other large sales of Chinese stocks during the quarter including New Oriental Education & Tech Group (EDU), JD.com (JD) and Alibaba Group (BABA).

• Market value: $2.4 trillion
• Billionaire investor: Winslow Capital Management
• Shares sold: 4,587,508 (99%)

Winslow Capital Management had $23.1 billion in managed securities in its first-quarter 13F. Apple (AAPL, $146.14) was its largest reduction in terms of the number of shares sold without completely closing out of the position. Interestingly, the Minneapolis-based hedge fund retained 2,386 shares of Apple that were worth $417,000 at the end of March. Perhaps that's to lay the groundwork for building a position in the iPhone maker in the future.

Apple was one of Winslow's largest positions heading into the quarter. However, after unloading nearly 4.6 million shares over the three-month period, AAPL is now the hedge fund's smallest stock holding. Only the iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF (IVW) has less of a weighting in Winslow's portfolio.

Winslow first acquired Apple shares in the third quarter of 2019, paying an average price of $55.99 a share. The sale was likely another case of profit-taking. AAPL shares finished the quarter at $174.61. They've fallen 16% in the second quarter.

The hedge fund also wasn't close to being the largest institutional seller of Apple stock in Q1 2022. That distinction belongs to Norges Bank, which sold 142.1 million AAPL shares to close out of its position entirely. State Street, meanwhile, came in second, selling 19.3 million shares during the quarter. Despite the sale, Apple remains State Street's largest equity position, with a 5.3% weighting.

AAPL was just one of 21 stocks Winslow reduced its stake in during the first quarter, while the hedge fund completely sold out of 16 positions. Its top 10 holdings accounted for 46.0% of its portfolio at the end of March.

• Market value: $215.2 billion
• Billionaire investor: Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)
• Shares sold: 157,444,464 (99%)

Verizon (VZ, $51.24) was easily Warren Buffett's biggest stock sale in the first quarter. Berkshire Hathaway sold 99% of its stake in America's second-largest wireless carrier. Despite unloading all but 1.38 million shares of VZ stock, its current stake is still worth $70.7 million. That's how big the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio is.

Berkshire first bought Verizon shares in the last quarter of 2020. It's estimated the holding company paid an average of $58.70 a share, or $9.3 billion, for its stake. VZ was Berkshire's seventh-largest position at the end of December, good enough to get a mention in the company's 2021 shareholder letter. It owned 3.8% of the company at the end of 2021, but that has fallen to a 0.03% ownership stake following the most recent share sale.

Verizon's share price traded in a tight range between $50 and $55 during the first quarter. Even if Buffett got $55 from Q1 2022's big sale, it likely lost money on the stock it sold. How it ultimately does on the remaining 1.3 million VZ shares has yet to be written.

Needless to say, it was not a good bet by Buffett & Co.

• Market value: $196.4 billion
• Billionaire investor: Ruane Cuniff & Goldfarb
• Shares sold: 2,804,442 (99%)

In the first quarter, Ruane Cuniff & Goldfarb sold out of just one stock and reduced its stakes in 19 others. The one stock it sold out entirely was Primerica (PRI). However, PRI was not a big holding for the investment firm best known for its Sequoia Fund. It owned 1,400 shares of the insurance and wealth management company.

Ruane's biggest sale in the first quarter was its disposition of 99% of its shares in Walt Disney (DIS, $107.83). Ruane first acquired Disney stock in Q2 2020. It paid an average price per share of $114.52. Following an 11.4% swoon in Q1 2022, Disney's share price was $137.16 at the end of March – and it has fallen even farther in the second quarter to now trade below cost.

So, it appears that Ruane sold out at the right time.

Still, at the end of March, Ruane owned 1,988 shares of the entertainment conglomerate. Just as Winslow Capital Management hung on to a little piece of Apple, the New York-based investment firm hung on to a little sliver of the blue-chip stock. One has to wonder why?

• Market value: $204.1 billion
• Billionaire investor: Steadfast Capital Management
• Shares sold: 1,672,054 (100%)

The New York-based hedge fund finished the first quarter with assets of $5.8 billion and 45 positions. One of them wasn't Abbott Laboratories (ABT, $116.42).

The hedge fund sold its entire position in the first quarter – a massive turnaround from the end of December, when ABT was one of Steadfast’s largest positions at 3.93% of the portfolio.

It was a quick turnaround, too. Steadfast first acquired shares in Abbott during the first quarter of 2021, paying an average price of $118.41 per share. The fund then added to its stake in Q2 – another 761,858 shares, for about 57% growth in the position. But over Q3 and Q4, Steadfast turned tail, unloading 149,705 and 263,979 shares, respectively. It was most certainly profit taking, as the stock hit a 52-week high of $142.60 on Dec. 27, 2021.

Meanwhile, during the first quarter, ABT shares traded between about $114 and $141. It wouldn’t be surprising if Steadfast executed most if not all of its exit during the first quarter.

• Market value: $27.9 billion
• Billionaire investor: John Paulson (Paulson & Co.)
• Shares sold: 474,010 (100%)

Cerner (CERN, $94.97) was one of six companies Paulson & Co. – the hedge fund founded by billionaire investor John Paulson – completely exited in the first quarter. Paulson first acquired CERN shares in the fourth quarter of 2021, so the bet was a quick one.

Paulson is estimated to have paid an average price of $92.87 a share for the healthcare technology stock. CERN's price at the end of March was $93.56 and it's barely budged from there.

There's a reason for the lack of movement.

In December, Cerner agreed to be acquired by Oracle (ORCL) for $28.3 billion, or $95 per share, in cash. Paulson might have held on to see if a better offer surfaced. When it was clear that wasn't going to happen, it's likely the hedge fund sold its shares. On June 1, ORCL said it has received all antitrust approvals for the buyout.

Two Sigma Advisers is one of the largest institutions still holding CERN. The hedge fund actually added 592,400 shares during the first quarter, bringing its total position to 4.4 million shares, or 1.1% of its portfolio.

• Market value: $24.2 billion
• Billionaire investor: Dan Loeb (Third Point)
• Shares sold: 5,687,819 (100%)

Third Point – the hedge fund founded by billionaire investor Dan Loeb – sold out of 26 stocks in the first quarter and reduced its position in 22 others. One of the largest positions it completely sold out of in Q1 was CoStar Group (CSGP, $61.13). At the end of December, the hedge fund's stake was worth $449.5 million, and accounted for 3.1% of its portfolio.

According to WhaleWisdom.com, Third Point first bought the commercial real estate data analytics firm's stock in Q1 2021. The average price paid is a shockingly high $154.30 a share. While that seems improbable, there is an explanation.

On June 28, 2021, CoStar split its stock on a 10-for-1 basis. So, Dan Loeb's 5.69 million shares were 568,782 before the stock split. Third Point's 13F from Q1 2021 confirms that the hedge fund owned 550,000 shares as of March 31, 2021.

At the end of Q2 2021, it owned 5,671,000 shares, which means it picked up an additional 17,100 shares before the 10-for-1 split. It picked up its final 16,819 in Q3 2021 after the split.

The 550,000 shares bought in Q1 2021 were worth $452.0 million at the end of March 2021. That's $82.19 a share post-split.

No matter which way you splice it, it's unlikely Loeb made money on this trade.

• Market value: $55.2 billion
• Billionaire investor: David Tepper (Appaloosa Management)
• Shares sold: 2,250,000 (100%)

Of the 12 stocks Appaloosa Management – the hedge fund co-founded by billionaire investor David Tepper – closed out in Q1 2022, General Motors (GM, $37.83) was the second-largest position behind T-Mobile (TMUS). Heading into the quarter, GM accounted for 3.39% of the hedge fund's portfolio.

Appaloosa's purchase of GM appears to be nothing more than poor timing. It acquired its shares in Q4 2021 at an average price of $58.63 a share. GM stock is currently trading more than 35% below that price.

For the sake of Appaloosa's limited partners, hopefully, David Tepper's money managers were able to unload GM by mid-January when shares were still trading in the mid-$50s.

Capital Research Global Investors was another investment firm to sell GM stock in Q1, with the 13.9 million shares sold the most of any institution. However, despite the large share sale, it still owned 81.2 million shares at the end of March, making it the investment management firm's 24th largest position.

While Appaloosa exited its GM position, Berenberg analyst Adrian Yanoshik is big on the Detroit auto manufacturer. On May 10, Yanoshik initiated coverage of GM with a Buy rating and a $55 price target.

"Despite fears, our work suggests that [auto maker] price-mix strength and deep order books can help generate free cash flow, funding transformations of legacy businesses into the electrified arena," Yanoshik wrote in a note to clients, as reported by Barron's.

We'll know who's right in a year from now.

• Market value: $1.5 billion
• Billionaire investor: David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital)
• Shares sold: 211,024 (100%)

Out of the 12 stocks David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital closed out in the first quarter, Jack in the Box (JACK, $69.48), a California-based burger chain, was his largest holding at the end of December, with a 1.06% weighting. Einhorn first acquired JACK shares in Q2 2020, paying an estimated $86.89 a share.

Between January and March, Jack in the Box's shares traded between $79 and $97, so it's possible the hedge fund made some money on its bet. Not a huge amount, mind you, but a profit is always better than a loss.

The consumer discretionary stock ended the first quarter at $93.41. Year-to-date, the stock is down 21%, so it appears Einhorn got out in the nick of time.

Last December, Jack in the Box announced that it would acquire Del Taco, the country's second-largest Mexican QSR (quick-service restaurant) chain by the number of locations. JACK paid roughly $585 million, including the assumption of debt, for Del Taco. It closed the deal on March 8.

• Market value: $78.7 billion
• Billionaire investor: Jim Simons (Renaissance Technologies)
• Shares sold: 4,066,036 (100%)

Figuring out which stocks to highlight with Jim Simons' hedge fund is not an easy task.

At the end of the first quarter, Renaissance Technologies had $85.2 billion invested among 4,032 companies. That's an average of $21.1 million per company. While most hedge funds' top 10 holdings account for more than 50% of their 13F portfolios, Renaissance's top 10 represent just 12% of its massive portfolio.

It was a busy first quarter for Simons. Over the three month period, the billionaire investor sold out of 656 stocks, reduced positions in 1,631, bought 828 new stocks and added to 1,564 existing positions.

Of the 656 stocks it exited in the first quarter, Micron Technology (MU, $70.45) was the second-largest position in terms of percentage of the hedge fund's portfolio at the end of December, with a 0.47% weighting, behind only Microsoft at 0.98%. Renaissance first acquired Micron shares in Q4 2018.

The hedge fund became legendary on Wall Street for using machine learning to bet on the markets. In a January 2020 article in Towards Data Science, the author points out that the firm's Medallion Fund achieved an average annual return of 66.1% between 1988 and 2019.

Renaissance Technologies is estimated to have paid an average of $89.87 a share for its position in Micron. On a few occasions in the first quarter, Micron's share price reached above $95. The hedge fund likely used its first-rate machine learning capabilities to get out with a profit in hand.

• Market value: $14.3 billion
• Billionaire investor: Seth Klarman (Baupost Group)
• Shares sold: 5,780,000 (100%)

Baupost Group, the hedge fund founded by billionaire investor Seth Klarman, sold out of just two stocks in the first quarter. One was NortonLifeLock (NLOK, $24.65). The other was Pershing Square Tontine Holdings (PSTH), Bill Ackman's failed special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Baupost also reduced its positions in 29 stocks during the first three months of 2022.

The hedge fund is said to have first initiated a position in NLOK in Q4 2021, paying an average of $25.98 a share for the cybersecurity software company. NortonLifeLock accounted for 1.48% of Baupost's $10.1 billion in assets listed in its fourth-quarter 13F.

Last August, NortonLifeLock announced that it was buying Czech consumer cybersecurity firm Avast for between $8.1 billion and $8.6 billion in a cash-and-stock transaction. The acquisition is expected to close sometime in the second half of 2022, pending regulatory review.

The combined business is expected to have annual revenue of $3.5 billion. Norton CEO Vincent Pilette will head the merged firm, while Avast CEO Ondrej Vlcek will serve as president. Norton shareholders will own between 74% and 86% of the combined entity.

The tech stock is down 5.1% for the year-to-date.

• Market value: $65.2 billion
• Billionaire investor: Carl Icahn
• Shares sold: 45,000,346 (100%)

A funny thing happened to Occidental Petroleum (OXY, $69.61) in the first quarter. Two billionaire investors were buying and selling the oil and gas producer's stock. Carl Icahn was the one doing the selling, while Warren Buffett was buying.

In early March, Icahn sold off the last of his 45 million shares of OXY stock, according to The Wall Street Journal. At one time, Icahn owned 10% of Occidental. He took the energy producer to task in 2019 for its $38 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum.

Buffett was instrumental in Occidental's Anadarko purchase.

In the first quarter, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bought 136.4 million OXY shares. Berkshire also owns preferred stock on OXY and has warrants to buy an additional 84 million shares that it received for helping Occidental acquire Anadarko.

As for Icahn, investors need not feel sorry for the billionaire. He first acquired shares of the company in the second quarter of 2019. He's estimated to have paid an average price of $21.44 a share, so the 86-year-old easily doubled his money over less than three years.

• Market value: $298.8 billion
• Billionaire investor: Philippe Laffont (Coatue Management)
• Shares sold: 10,311,917 (100%)

Coatue Management sold out of 35 stocks in the first quarter, while reducing its stake in another 18 companies. Pfizer (PFE, $53.26) was the most notable position the New York-based hedge fund closed out of. During the first quarter, Pfizer stock traded as high as $58.55 and as low as $45.40.

The hedge fund first acquired shares of PFE in Q4 2021, so the position wasn't held for very long. Coatue is estimated to have paid an average of $59.05 per share during the final three months of 2021, so the fund most likely lost money on its Pfizer position.

Coatue still counts healthcare stock Moderna (MRNA) among its top positions – the 6.9 million shares held makeup 8.7% of its portfolio. This puts it in third place, just behind electric vehicle stocks Tesla (TSLA) and Rivian Automotive (RIVN) that take up the top two spots.

Among other institutions selling 100% of their Pfizer stock during the quarter was Sanders Capital. The Florida-based hedge fund unloaded its 12.2 million PFE shares in Q1. Unlike Coatue, Sanders Capital first acquired Pfizer shares in Q4 2015, paying an average price of $33.24 per share.

While PFE stock is down nearly 10% for the year-to-date, it could have a potential COVID-related catalyst coming down the pike. The Food and Drug Administration recently announced that 5- to 11-year-olds are now able to get a Pfizer/BioNTech (BNTX) booster shot. In addition, Paxlovid, the company's antiviral pill to treat COVID-19, is expected to generate $22 billion in sales in 2022.

• Market value: $172.0 billion
• Billionaire investor: David Tepper (Appaloosa Management)
• Shares sold: 1,275,992 (100%)

In the first quarter of 2022, Appaloosa Management closed out 12 positions. America's third-largest wireless carrier, T-Mobile US (TMUS, $137.17), was one of them. And TMUS was the hedge fund's largest position at the end of December – accounting for 3.8% of the $3.9 billion in assets listed on its fourth-quarter 13F – that it closed out in the first quarter.

Appaloosa first acquired TMUS shares in Q4 2017. It paid an average of $99.35 a share. At the end of the first quarter, T-Mobile shares traded at $128.35. For the year-to-date, they're up 18.3% – not too bad considering the S&P 500 is down more than 13% so far in 2022.

T-Mobile stock's return is also better than its two biggest competitors: AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) that are up 12.7% and down 1.4% for the year-to-date, respectively. When it comes to wireless, T-Mobile is winning the shareholder return game so far in 2022.

Of the other institutions that sold TMUS in Q1 2022, King Street Capital had the largest weighting for TMUS at the end of December, with its stake accounting for 7.78% of its $1.07 billion in assets. No other company came close to being nearly as consequential a closeout.

For whatever reason, known only to David Tepper and Appaloosa Management, the hedge fund didn't sell TMUS in July 2021 when it hit an all-time high of $150.20. Clearly, the 2022 rebound has given the hedge fund a chance to bow out gracefully.

• Market value: $23.2 billion
• Billionaire investor: Larry Robbins (Glenview Capital Management)
• Shares sold: 362,996 (100%)

Glenview Capital Management sold out of six stocks in the first quarter and reduced its holdings in 20 others. One of the six it sold in its entirety was Willis Towers Watson (WTW, $208.27). The hedge fund first acquired shares in the insurance brokerage in Q3 2021. It paid an average price per share of $232.46. Prior to the sale, WTW accounted for 1.84% of Glenview's $4.7 billion in managed 13F securities at the end of December.

While Glenview's sale of Willis Towers Watson is notable, the biggest seller in terms of the number of WTW shares sold in the first quarter was Eagle Capital Management. It sold 2.0 million shares over the three-month period, nearly its entire stake. The New York-based investment firm first acquired shares in Q1 2021, paying an average price per share of $228.96.

At the end of April, Willis reported first-quarter earnings that included an 11% year-over-year increase in adjusted net income to $315 million, or $2.66 per share. Analysts, on average, were expecting $2.28 a share. Its revenue during the first quarter was down 3% versus the year prior to $2.2 billion.

Warren Buffett once again was a net seller of equities in the fourth quarter, slicing, slashing and outright exiting stakes across a series of sectors that have fallen out of his favor. But the Oracle of Omaha did pull off a few interesting buys in Q4, too.

The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) continued to pull back on bets in the financial and healthcare sectors, with a particular focus on ridding himself of positions in the pharmaceuticals industry.

On the other side of the ledger, Buffett made incremental additions to holdings with exposure to the housing market, upped a major energy sector bet in a big way, backed another initial public offering (IPO) and even got behind an international motorsport circuit.

We know what the greatest long-term investor of all time has been up to because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires investment managers with at least $100 million in assets to file a Form 13F quarterly report disclosing changes in share ownership. These documents add an important level of transparency to the stock market and give Buffett-ologists a bead on what the Berkshire chief is thinking.

When Buffett initiates a stake in some company, or adds to an existing one, investors read into that as a vote of confidence. But if he pares his holdings in a stock, it can spark investors to rethink their own investments.

Here's the scorecard for what Warren Buffett was buying and selling during the fourth quarter of 2021, based on Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filed on Feb. 14, 2022, for the period ended Dec. 31, 2021. You can check out the entire list of Buffett stocks here, or continue reading if you're most interested in Buffett's most recent transactions.

And remember: Not all "Warren Buffett stocks" are actually his picks. Some of Berkshire Hathaway's positions are handled by lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

Current share prices are as of Feb. 14, 2022. Holdings data is as of Dec. 31, 2021. Sources: Berkshire Hathaway's SEC Form 13F filed Feb. 14, 2022, for the reporting period ended Dec. 31, 2021; and WhaleWisdom.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 61,412,910 (-0.01% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $2.8 billion

Warren Buffett reduced Berkshire Hathaway's exposure to one of his more recent favorite stock picks by an immaterial amount in Q4. The holding company shed 350,000 shares, or less than 0.01% of its stake, in supermarket operator Kroger (KR, $45.69).

Buffett first bought Kroger in the fourth quarter of 2019 and quickly built on the position over the following two years. Shares are up by 57% on a price basis since Buffett initiated the position, boosted by the pandemic and operational tailwinds. Once you throw in dividends, the KR position has delivered a 66% total return.

Kroger operates roughly 2,750 retail food stores operating under such banners as Dillons, Ralphs, Harris Teeter and its namesake brand, as well as 1,585 gas stations and even 170 jewelry stores under banners including Fred Meyer Jewelers and Littman Jewelers.

With more than 61 million shares, Berkshire Hathaway is Kroger's third-largest stockholder, holding 8.4% of its shares outstanding. Only BlackRock (10.7%) and Vanguard (9.9%) have larger stakes in the supermarket chain.

It's only a middle-of-the-pack position at just 0.8% of Berkshire's equity portfolio. But the old-economy value play is a natural Buffett stock, right in line with the Oracle's traditional interests.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 3,986,648 (-7.0% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.4 billion

Mastercard (MA, $374.16) was the idea of lieutenants Todd Combs and/or Ted Weschler (Buffett won't tell). And it has been a mighty successful idea, returning well more than 1,400% since Berkshire established the stake in the first quarter of 2011.

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But for a second straight quarter, Berkshire Hathaway lightened its exposure. The holding company reduced its stake by 7% in Q4 to just under 4 million shares. That followed a cut of 6%, or 276,108 shares, in the prior quarter.

Mastercard is a bet on the global growth of digital transactions, and happens to be a Wall Street and hedge fund darling as well. Analysts credit MA's long-term outperformance to its "powerful brand, vast global acceptance network and strong business model." Substantial barriers to entry, thanks to Mastercard's massive scale, global reach, security and data management skills, information intelligence and trust, have also served it well.

MA wasn't a particularly meaningful part of BRK.B's equity portfolio prior to the most recent sales, and it's even less material now. MA accounts for 0.43% of the holding company's total portfolio value, down from 0.51% in Q3.

Shares in Mastercard were essentially unchanged in 2021, lagging the broader market by about 26 percentage points. The spread of COVID-19 greatly curtailed cross-border spending, as well as billings related to travel and entertainment.

The new year has been a different story, however, with MA beating the S&P 500 by a wide margin through the first seven weeks of 2022.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 3,828,941 (-8.0% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $2.5 billion

Charter Communications (CHTR, $608.28) seems to have lost some of its shine for Warren Buffett over the past few years.

The company – which markets cable TV, internet, telephone and other services under the Spectrum brand – is America's second-largest cable operator behind Comcast (CMCSA). It greatly expanded its reach in 2016 when it acquired Time Warner Cable and sister company Bright House Networks.

And yet Buffett slashed BRK.B's stake by another 8% during the fourth quarter of 2021. That followed a cut of nearly 20% in Q3, as well as reductions in 2020 and 2017 as well.

The most recent sale of 371,685 shares leaves Berkshire Hathaway with 2.1% of the cable company's shares outstanding, down from 2.4% at the end of Q3 – though BRK.B remains a top-10 shareholder. The stake was worth $2.5 billion as of Dec. 31, 2021.

Charter now accounts for 0.75% of Berkshire Hathaway's total portfolio value, down from more than 1% in Q3.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 8,297,460 (-13% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.8 billion

Like Mastercard, the Visa (V, $225.34) stock pick was the brainchild of either Todd Combs or Ted Weschler. And also like Mastercard, Visa – the world's largest payments processor – is a bet on the global growth of digital transactions.

The stock gets high marks from Wall Street analysts and is a favorite among hedge fund managers and billionaires. And yet Berkshire Hathaway cut its stake in Visa for a second consecutive quarter.

The holding company reduced its Visa exposure by 13%, or 1.3 million shares, in Q4. That followed a cut of 4% in the previous quarter.

Berkshire's remaining stake of 8.3 million shares was worth $1.8 billion as of Dec. 31, and accounted for 0.5% of its total portfolio value. That's down from 0.7% at the end of Q3.

Berkshire Hathaway first bought Visa in the third quarter of 2011, and while he didn't specify whether it was Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, Buffett admitted that it was one of his lieutenants. He also has said that he wishes it was his own stock pick, and that Berkshire had bought even more.

"If I had been as smart as Ted or Todd, I would have (bought Visa)," Buffett told shareholders at the 2018 annual meeting.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 8,648,268 (-34% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $344.6 million

Berkshire Hathaway sure changed its mind in a hurry on Royalty Pharma (RPRX, $39.11). After all, the holding company initiated a stake in the company just one quarter ago.

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Buffett picked up RPRX in the third quarter, buying 13.1 million shares worth $475.0 million at the time. However, he turned around and slashed the stake by more than a third, dumping 4.5 million shares in Q4.

Buffett has been hot and cold – OK, mostly cold – with his bets in the healthcare sector for the past several quarters, which might help explain the abrupt volte-face.

Royalty Pharma, as the name might indicate, is focused on acquiring biopharmaceutical royalties. It doesn't research or develop drugs – it helps provide capital for the companies that do. Through that model, RPRX has gotten a piece of blockbuster drugs such as AbbVie's (ABBV) Imbruvica, Biogen's (BIIB) Tysabri and Pfizer's (PFE) Xtandi.

To be sure, RPRX was never a significant holding to begin with. It now accounts for just 0.1% of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio, down from 0.16% at the end of Q3.

However, with more than 2.0% of the firm's shares outstanding, BRK.B remains a top-10 stockholder.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 5,202,674 (-76% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $324.4 million

Warren Buffett reversed course on Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY, $59.62) in a big way in the fourth quarter, cutting his company's stake by 76%. Berkshire Hathaway has now sold shares in BMY during every quarter of 2021.

The most recent sales amounted to 16.8 million shares, leaving the holding company with a stake worth just $324.4 million as of Dec. 31. That followed a 16% reduction in Q3, when Buffett shed 4.2 million shares in the pharmaceutical giant.

Altogether, the moves represent a 180 for Berkshire Hathaway, which first bought BMY in the third quarter of 2020 and immediately added to the position in Q4.

The moves come as part of a general retreat by Berkshire Hathaway's on bets in the pharmaceutical industry. In the case of BMY, its late 2019 acquisition of biotech giant Celgene was thought to be a big part of Buffett's attraction to the stock. The deal brought in a pair of blockbuster multiple myeloma treatments: Pomalyst and Revlimid, the latter of which also treats mantle cell lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndrome.

A long track record of successful acquisitions has kept the pharma company's pipeline primed with big-name drugs over the years. But if the past four quarters of selling are any indication, Buffett seems to have reset his expectations for BMY – and the broader sector – going forward.

BMY now accounts for 0.1% of Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio value, down from 0.4% in Q3.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 3,033,561 (-78% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $410.7 million

Buffett first bought AbbVie (ABBV, $143.00) during the third quarter of 2020 as part of a wider bet on the pharmaceutical industry. But Berkshire has all but given up on the position, gutting it over the past four consecutive quarters.

The holding company dumped 11.4 million shares, or 78% of its ABBV stake, during the fourth quarter. That followed reductions of 29% in Q3, 10% in Q2 and 10% in Q1. AbbVie now accounts for just 0.1% of Berkshire's equity portfolio, down from 0.5% at the end of the third quarter.

The pharma giant is best known for blockbuster drugs such as Humira and Imbruvica, but analysts are also optimistic about the potential for its cancer-fighting and immunology drugs.

Another thing that puts ABBV among classic Buffett stocks is the biopharma firm's storied dividend history. AbbVie is an S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat, by virtue of having raised its dividend every year for 50 years. The most recent hike – an 8.5% increase to the quarterly payment to $1.41 per share – was declared in October 2021.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 404,911 (-85% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $70.4 million

Berkshire Hathaway slashed its stake in Marsh McLennan (MMC, $151.71) yet again, this time by a whopping 85% in Q4.

Buffett sold more than a third of the position in Q3 after lightening up on it in Q2. The sales mark a stark reversal from Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, in which Berkshire initiated and then grew its stake in the insurance company.

Berkshire has plenty of insurance exposure in its core operations, of course, including Geico, General Re, MLMIC Insurance and Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance, among others. But up until recently, the industry has never been a major factor in its equity portfolio. In fact, Buffett dumped what little of his Travelers (TRV) stake remained in early 2020.

The wind had changed direction for a couple quarters. Berkshire initiated a 4.2 million-share position in MMC worth just short of half a billion dollars during Q4 2020. It wasn't a major position, at just 0.2% of the total value of Berkshire's equity holdings. But by virtue of another 1 million shares or so purchased in Q1 2021, the stake had increased by 23% in just a few short months.

Cut to today, however, and Berkshire now holds what is essentially just a rump position. Its stake of less than 405,000 shares – worth $70.4 million as of Dec. 31 – accounts for 0.02% of its total portfolio value.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares sold: 42,789,295
• Value of stake: $0

Berkshire Hathaway is out of the Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA, $8.52) business, having sold the entirety of its stake – or 42,789,295 shares – in the firm.

The move comes amid Buffett's general multi-quarter retreat from bets across the healthcare sector.

During the fourth quarter of 2017, Berkshire initiated a stake in the Israel-based drug manufacturer, which was out of the market's favor at the time. A bloated balance sheet, mass layoffs and the looming expiration of drug patents had short sellers circling the stock. Needless to say, TEVA's valuation was depressed. Buffett apparently saw a bargain to be had.

Cheap? Yes. Value? Apparently not. The turnaround never materialized, leaving Teva's stock down roughly 75% over the past five years. This one looks like a bet Warren Buffett wishes he could take back.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares sold: 43,658,800
• Value of stake: $0

Berkshire technically had three different investments in satellite-radio leader Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI, $6.17) as of Q3 2021. Not only did it hold a slug of SIRI shares – it also had positions via two different tracking stocks: Liberty Sirius XM Group Series A (LSXMA) and Liberty Sirius XM Group Series C (LSXMK) tracking stock.

At least these convoluted holdings gained a little clarity in Q4.

Buffett exited his stake in SIRI – which the holding company initiated during Q4 2016 – selling all of Berkshire Hathaway's 43.7 million shares. Thus, all of Berkshire's exposure to Sirius XM is now through Liberty-connected tracking stocks.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 1,816,547 (+1.0% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $973.6 million

In Q4, Warren Buffett topped off BRK.B's stake in RH (RH, $408.62), which many readers know as Restoration Hardware.

The holding company upped its position by 1%, or 24,580 shares. Berkshire's total holdings of more than 1.8 million shares were worth more than $973 million as of Dec. 31. Berkshire, which was already positioned in home furnishings retail via its Nebraska Furniture Mart subsidiary, initiated the RH position Q3 2019.

RH operates 104 retail and outlet stores across the U.S. and Canada. It also owns Waterworks, a high-end bath-and-kitchen retailer with 14 showrooms.

While brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled mightily over the past few years thanks in part to the rise of e-commerce, RH has found success catering to the upper crust. And that success continued throughout the COVID pandemic as Americans, forced to work from home, decided to spend on improving their environs.

It's hard to tell whether this was an Oracle of Omaha buy, or a project of one of his lieutenants, Ted Weschler or Todd Combs. Buffett has been mostly mum on RH. Still, the stake fits broadly with the Oracle's worldview. Buffett stocks tend to be bets on America's growth, which certainly includes housing-related industries.

With 8.5% of RH's shares outstanding, Berkshire Hathaway is the company's third-largest stockholder.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 843,709 (+3% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $109.7 million

Warren Buffett added 3% to Berkshire Hathaway's stake in Floor & Decor Holdings (FND, $104.85) in Q4, after initiating the position during the previous quarter.

The investment is very much in keeping with some of his other investments in home retail. Floor & Decor sells hard surface flooring and related accessories primarily through 133 company-operated warehouse store formats.

Buffett bought another 26,846 shares in the company to raise BRK.B's total position to nearly 844,000 shares.

True, it's basically still an immaterial holding, comprising just 0.03% of the portfolio. (For context, BRK.B's top 10 stocks account for nearly 90% of its portfolio value.)

But FND still fits nicely with some of Buffett's other holdings and investments. As we just said, Berkshire has also been building a position in homegoods retailer RH – formerly known as Restoration Hardware – since the third quarter of 2019. And Buffett has made no secret of his love for Berkshire Hathaway's wholly owned subsidiary Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Floor & Decor thus appears to be a way to play the housing market, albeit with a somewhat oblique, Buffett-style angle.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 38,245,036 (+33% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $4.5 billion

It has been nearly impossible to get a bead on Buffett & Co.'s holdings in the energy sector over the past couple years.

Consider some of Uncle Warren's moves:

• Q4 2019: Sold off most of his Phillips 66 (PSX) position, but added more than 150% to his Occidental Petroleum (OXY) stake, and nearly 40% to a Suncor (SU) stake.
• Q1 2020: Fully exited Phillips 66.
• Q2 2020: Bailed out of his Occidental position, but upped Suncor by 28%.
• Q4 2020: Initiated a position in Chevron (CVX, $136.67), but dropped more than a quarter of the Suncor position.
• Q1 2021: Exited Suncor, sold more than half the Chevron position.

And now, after making another small trim to CVX during the second quarter of 2020 year, Buffett has come back and added a total of roughly 39 million shares over the past two quarters.

Berkshire upped its Chevron stake by 33% in the fourth quarter, adding more than 9.5 million shares. That followed a 24% increase, or nearly 29 million shares, in Q3.

Buffett now holds a total of more than 38 million shares in the energy supermajor, worth $4.5 billion. The stock, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, has delivered a total return of 58% over the past 52 weeks, thanks to soaring crude oil prices.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 20,207,680 (+35% from Q3 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.0 billion

There's not really much to say as it pertains to Liberty Sirius XM Group, Series A (LSXMA).

Buffett has been involved with the Sirius XM tracking stock since the second quarter of 2016, and has been one of the stock's largest shareholders for some time. He added to that stake in a big way during Q4 2021, packing on more than 5.4 million shares, or 35%.

The most curious thing about the move is that it came during the same quarter Berkshire exited its position in Sirius XM's common shares.

So clearly, Buffett still wants to be involved with the world's top satellite radio provider. He apparently has just finally decided that the Liberty-tethered tracking shares are a more ideal way of doing so.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 2,118,746
• Value of stake: $134.0 million

Berkshire Hathaway initiated a miniscule stake in Formula One Group (FWONK, $62.29) in Q4. The purchase of 2.1 million shares, worth $134 million, represent 0.04% of the holding company's equity portfolio.

FWONK holds commercial rights for the Formula One world championship – a nine-month long motor race-based competition in which teams compete for the constructors' championship and drivers compete for the drivers' championship.

Formula One Group also is a subsidiary of John Malone's Liberty Media Corporation, making FWONK yet another of several Berkshire investments tied to the billionaire businessman.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 14,658,121
• Value of stake: $975.2 million

Berkshire Hathaway initiated a stake in video game publisher Activision Blizzard (ATVI, $81.50) during the fourth quarter.

Great timing.

In mid-January, Microsoft (MSFT) agreed to pay $68.7 billion, or $95 a share in cash, for the troubled video game publisher. At the time the deal was announced, the software titan was paying a premium of roughly 30% to the video game maker's most recent closing price.

BRK.B, however, bought more than 14.6 million shares in ATVI – worth $975.2 million as of Dec. 31 – during the fourth quarter at an estimated average price of $66.53 per share. That means Buffett likely made a quick 43% profit in very short order.

As we noted at the time, long-suffering shareholders — not to mention canny value investors — were rewarded for their patience in Activision Blizzard, which had a terrible 2021.

The developer of global hits such as World of Warcraft and the Call of Duty franchise saw its stock plunge amid allegations of sexual harassment, litigation, torrents of bad press and calls for CEO Bobby Kotick to step down. The company also faced tough year-over-year comparisons against 2020's pandemic-fueled growth.

Credit to Buffett or his lieutenants for buying a beaten-down stock on the cheap. Although at just 0.3% of Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio, the ATVI bet can't move the needle all that much.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 107,118,784
• Value of stake: $1.0 billion

Buffett-backed Nu Holdings (NU, $8.68) went public late last year, giving Berkshire Hathaway a stake worth $1 billion as of Dec. 31.

The Brazilian financial technology company, which offers digital banking services to 48 million customers in Latin America, was one of the largest initial public offerings (IPOs) of 2021. The fintech's hook is that most retail banks in Brazil charge extremely high fees while offering poor customer service to boot.

The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, for the record, has never been a fan of IPOs. He's said so, on the record, and has notably turned up his nose at some of the most heavily hyped stock market debuts.

But that didn't scare him away from NU, the second widely touted IPO he's backed in the past two years. Berkshire Hathaway backed Snowflake's (SNOW) blockbuster IPO when the cloud infrastructure unicorn hit the public market in fall 2020.

Warren Buffett once again was a net seller of equities in the third quarter, reducing Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B, $284.67) exposure to the stock market amid a series of then-record highs and increasingly stretched valuations.

The chairman and CEO continued to back out of bets in the pharmaceutical sector, pared Berkshire Hathaway's holding in financial stocks – and payments processors in particular – and eliminated one cable bet in its entirety.

On the plus side of the ledger, Buffett initiated a stake in a flooring retailer and added to an existing position in a major energy sector name.

The bottom line, however, is that the Oracle of Omaha continued to play defense when it comes to Berkshire Hathaway's equity investments. Buffett oversaw a total of $1.95 billion in net sales of equities from his holding company's portfolio during the three months ended Sept. 30, up from $1.1 billion in the second quarter. Indeed, the chief has been paring back on Berkshire Hathaway's market exposure for several quarters in a row.

We know what the greatest long-term investor of all time has been up to because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires investment managers with at least $100 million in assets to file a Form 13F quarterly report disclosing changes in share ownership. These documents add an important level of transparency to the stock market and give Buffett-ologists a bead on what the Berkshire chief is thinking.

When Buffett initiates a stake in some company, or adds to an existing one, investors read into that as a vote of confidence. But if he pares his holdings in a stock, it can spark investors to rethink their own investments.

Here's the scorecard for what Warren Buffett was buying and selling during the third quarter of 2021, based on Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filed on Nov. 15, 2021, for the period ended Sept. 30, 2021. You can check out the entire list of Buffett stocks here, or continue reading if you're most interested in Buffett's most recent transactions.

And remember: Not all "Warren Buffett stocks" are actually his picks. Some of Berkshire Hathaway's positions are handled by lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

Current share prices are as of Nov. 15, 2021. Holdings data is as of Sept. 30, 2021. Sources: Berkshire Hathaway's SEC Form 13F filed Nov. 15, 2021, for the reporting period ended Sept. 30, 2021; and WhaleWisdom.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 126,417,887 (-1% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $7.5 billion

U.S. Bancorp (USB, $60.46) is the nation's fifth-largest bank by assets and America's biggest regional bank. It's also one of the oldest Buffett stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio; the Oracle of Omaha initiated his position in the first quarter of 2006.

Buffett is notoriously tight-lipped about U.S. Bancorp and, at least historically speaking, has rarely touched the position. But he clipped it by another 1% in Q3, or by 2.5 million shares, following trimmings of 0.6% and 1.1% in Q2 and Q1, respectively.

Scraping just a bit off the USB stake for three consecutive quarters stands in stark contrast to what Buffett has done with so many of Berkshire's other bank stocks over the past year or so. Indeed, he mostly has taken a hatchet to his financial-sector holdings. And it's not like the regional lender's returns have justified holding on when Buffett has abandoned so many of its peers.

True, USB's total return beats the broader market by 6.6 percentage points so far in 2021, but it lags considerably over the past three-, five-, 10- and 15-year periods.

U.S. Bancorp shareholders no doubt appreciate Berkshire's vote of confidence. The holding company's 8.5% stake makes it the largest institutional shareholder, ahead of Vanguard (7.3%) and BlackRock (6.3%).

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 9,562,460 (-4% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $2.1 billion

Warren Buffett, analysts and hedge fund managers are all big fans of Visa (V, $212.30), the world's largest payments processor, thanks to the runaway growth in digital mobile transactions globally. The pandemic actually accelerated businesses' and consumers' interest in cashless transactions, no doubt thanks to the perception that paper bills are "dirty."

But as bright as Visa's growth prospects might be, that didn't prevent Buffett from slightly reducing BRK.B's exposure to the Dow stock during the third quarter. The holding company reduced its stake by 4%, or 425,000 shares, bringing its total ownership down to 0.6% of Visa's shares outstanding.

Berkshire's remaining stake of 9.6 million shares was worth $2.1 billion as of Sept. 30 and accounted for 0.7% of its total portfolio value. That's down from 0.8% at the end of Q2.

Berkshire Hathaway first bought Visa in the third quarter of 2011, and Buffett admits it was actually the idea of lieutenants Todd Combs and/or Ted Weschler. Buffett won't say who the responsible party was, but he has said he wishes it was his own stock pick, and that Berkshire had bought even more.

"If I had been as smart as Ted or Todd, I would have (bought Visa)," Buffett told shareholders at the 2018 annual meeting.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 4,288,648 (-6% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.5 billion

As with Visa, Mastercard (MA, $361.36) was the idea of lieutenants Todd Combs and/or Ted Weschler (Buffett won't tell). And like Visa, Buffett wishes Berkshire had bought more.

And again, just as with Visa, Berkshire Hathaway reduced its exposure to Mastercard in Q3. The holding company cut its stake by 6%, or 276,108 shares, bringing its total holdings down to 4.3 million. The stake, worth $1.5 billion as of Sept. 30, accounts for 0.5% of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio, down incrementally from the second quarter.

Mastercard is another bet on the global growth of digital transactions, and it too is a Wall Street and hedge fund darling. Analysts credit MA's long-term outperformance to its "powerful brand, vast global acceptance network and strong business model." Substantial barriers to entry, thanks to Mastercard's massive scale, global reach, security and data management skills, information intelligence and trust, have also served it well.

Shares in Mastercard and Visa have lagged the performance of the broader market in 2021, hurt in part by uncertainty created by the pandemic. The spread of COVID-19 greatly curtailed cross-border spending, as well as billings related to travel and entertainment.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 22,046,936 (-16% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.3 billion

Warren Buffett reversed course on Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY, $59.62) for a third consecutive quarter, cutting Berkshire Hathaway's stake by another 16% in Q3.

Buffett shed 4.2 million shares in the pharmaceutical giant over the three months ended Sept. 30. The haircut followed a 15% reduction in the second quarter and a 7% cut in Q1. That represents a 180 for Berkshire Hathaway, which first bought in Q3 of last year and bulked up its position in Q4.

The moves come as part of a general retreat by Berkshire Hathaway's on bets in the pharmaceutical sector. In the case of BMY, its late 2019 acquisition of pharmaceutical giant Celgene was thought to be a big part of Buffett's attraction to the stock. The deal brought in a pair of blockbuster multiple myeloma treatments: Pomalyst and Revlimid, the latter of which also treats mantle cell lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndromes.

A long track record of successful acquisitions has kept the pharma company's pipeline primed with big-name drugs over the years. But if the past three quarters of selling are any indication, Buffett seems to have reset his expectations for BMY – and the broader sector – going forward.

BMY now accounts for 0.4% of Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio value, down from 0.6% in Q2.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 4,200,626 (-19% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $3.1 billion

Charter Communications (CHTR, $692.91) seems to have lost some of its shine for Warren Buffett over the past few years. The company, which markets cable TV, internet, telephone and other services under the Spectrum brand, is America's second-largest cable operator behind Comcast (CMCSA). It greatly expanded its reach in 2016 when it acquired Time Warner Cable and sister company Bright House Networks.

And yet Buffett slashed BRK.B's stake by nearly a fifth over the three months ended Sept. 30. The holding company sold more than 1 million shares in Charter, bringing its total ownership in the firm down to 2.3% of its shares outstanding, from 2.9% as of the end of Q2.

The sales also significantly reduced CHTR's position in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio. It now accounts for 1% of the holding company's total equity investments, down from 1.3% at the end of Q2.

Buffett entered CHTR in the second quarter of 2014, but cut the stake in 2017 and again in 2020.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 14,398,488 (-29% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.6 billion

Buffett first bought AbbVie (ABBV, $116.84) in the third quarter of 2020 as part of a wider bet on the pharmaceutical industry. But Berkshire has cooled on the position, cutting into it for three consecutive quarters.

The holding company sliced another 29% off its ABBV stake in Q3, unloading 6.1 million shares. That follows a reduction of 10%, or 2.3 million shares, in Q2, as well as a 10% cut to the position in Q1. AbbVie now accounts for 0.5% of Berkshire's equity portfolio, down from 0.8% at the end of Q1.

The pharma giant is best known for blockbuster drugs such as Humira and Imbruvica, but analysts are also optimistic about the potential for its cancer-fighting and immunology drugs.

Another thing that puts ABBV among classic Buffett stocks is the biopharma firm's storied dividend history. AbbVie is an S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat, by virtue of having raised its dividend every year for 50 years. The most recent hike – an 8.5% increase to the quarterly payment to $1.41 per share – was declared in October 2021.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 2,741,755 (-34% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $415.2 million

Berkshire Hathaway cut its stake in Marsh McLennan (MMC, $167.35) by more than a third in the most recent quarter, following up on a reduction in Q2. The sales mark a reversal of the previous two quarters in which Berkshire initiated and then grew his stake in the insurance company.

Berkshire has plenty of insurance exposure in its core operations, including Geico, General Re, MLMIC Insurance and Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance, among others. But up until recently, the industry has never been a major factor in its equity portfolio. In fact, Buffett dumped what little of his Travelers (TRV) stake remained in early 2020.

The wind had changed direction for a couple quarters. Berkshire initiated a 4.2 million-share position in MMC worth just short of half a billion dollars during Q4 2020. It wasn't a major position, at just 0.2% of the total value of Berkshire's equity holdings. But by virtue of another 1 million shares or so purchased in Q1 2021, the stake had increased by 23% in just a few short months.

Cut to today, however, and Berkshire spent Q3 reducing the stake by 34% – after unloading a fifth of the Marsh McLennan position in Q2. The remaining 2.7 million shares in MMC were worth $415.2 million as of Sept. 30, or a little more than 0.1% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Buffett completely sold out of Berkshire Hathaway's position in pharmaceutical giant Merck (MRK, $83.69) in Q3, which should come as a surprise to no one.

After all, Buffett slashed his position in the Dow stock by more than half in Q2. And that followed a first-quarter scything of 10.8 million shares, or 38% of the holding company’s stake at that time.

The sales are in keeping with Buffett's recent retreat in pharmaceutical stocks. But MRK has other company-specific concerns, too.

Central to Merck's fundamental performance is Keytruda, a blockbuster cancer drug approved for more than 20 indications. Keytruda is on patent only until 2028, however. Additionally, some of MRK's key brands start losing marketing exclusivity in 2022.

Merck also recently spun off its Organon (OGN) women's health business to shareholders. Some analysts criticized the spinoff because it makes MRK even more dependent on Keytruda and a few other select best-selling drugs.

It’s just as well. The Merck stake, at just 0.2% of Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio, had become an afterthought, anyway.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Buffett exited the holding company's stake in Organon (OGN, $33.38), which, as noted above, Berkshire came to own by way of a Merck spinoff to shareholders in Q2.

The stake of 1.6 million shares was essentially immaterial to Berkshire Hathaway, comprising no more than 0.02% of its equity portfolio.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Warren Buffett continued to streamline his investments in John Malone-backed businesses in Q3. Berkshire Hathaway sold its remaining rump stake of Liberty Global Class C shares (LBTYK, $29.14). The 1.9 million shares comprised just 0.02% of the holding company's equity portfolio value.

Liberty Global bills itself as the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with operations in seven European countries. And the company – represented via Class A (LBTYA) and Liberty Global Class C Shares shares – was one of Berkshire's bets on communications and media companies whipped up by billionaire dealmaker John Malone.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 28,703,519 (+24% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $2.9 billion

It has been nearly impossible to get a bead on Buffett & Co.'s holdings in the energy sector over the past couple years.

Consider some of Uncle Warren's moves over the past few years:

• Q4 2019: Sold off most of his Phillips 66 (PSX) position, but added more than 150% to his Occidental Petroleum (OXY) stake, and nearly 40% to a Suncor (SU) stake.
• Q1 2020: Fully exited Phillips 66.
• Q2 2020: Bailed out of his Occidental position, but upped Suncor by 28%.
• Q4 2020: Initiated a position in Chevron (CVX, $116.82), but dropped more than a quarter of the Suncor position.
• Q1 2021: Exited Suncor, sold more than half the Chevron position.

And now, after making another small trim to CVX during the second quarter of this year, Buffett came back and added nearly 29 million more shares, or 24% to his existing Chevron stake.

It's funny. When Berkshire initiated its 48 million-share, $4.1 billion position in Chevron, the integrated energy major had the makings of a classic Buffett stock, in the same vein as Coca-Cola (KO) and American Express (AXP). CVX checks off a lot of Buffett boxes, after all. It's a well-known American brand – one that fits very neatly into the value camp as of late last year. And it offers an outsized dividend that still yields 4.6% after a 38% gain in 2021.

But it's hard to tell whether Buffett will hang on like he has with KO and AXP. For now, CVX makes plenty of sense given an improved outlook for oil and gas as the world recovers from the depths of the pandemic.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 20,207,680 (+35% from Q2 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.0 billion

Berkshire technically has three different investments in satellite-radio leader Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI). Not only does it hold a slug of SIRI shares – it also has positions via two different tracking stocks: Liberty Sirius XM Group Series A (LSXMA, $55.74) and Liberty Sirius XM Group Series C (LSXMK) tracking stock.

Liberty Media has for years held a large stake in Sirius XM Holdings. But in 2015, the company actually recapitalized, offering (among other things) several tracking stocks that allowed investors to participate in the performance of Liberty's Sirius XM investment directly rather than get it piecemeal through Liberty Media itself.

While that stake has largely been left alone over the past few quarters, Buffett decided to amplify his Sirius bet by tacking on another 20 million or so shares of LSXMA, or a 35% bump from the second quarter of 2021.

Berkshire is the largest institutional shareholder in each of the tracking stocks, holding 15.3% of Liberty Sirius XM's C shares and 19.2% of the A shares.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 816,863
• Value of stake: $98.7 million

Warren Buffett initiated a stake in Floor & Decor Holdings (FND, $130.00) in Q3, which is very much in keeping with some of his other investments in home retail. Floor & Decor sells hard surface flooring and related accessories primarily through 133 company-operated warehouse store formats.

Buffett bought more than 816,000 shares in the company worth almost $99 million as of Sept. 30. It's a small position, to be sure, accounting for a meager 0.03% of Berkshire Hathaway's total portfolio value. But it still fits nicely with some of Buffett's other holdings and investments.

Berkshire Hathaway, for example, has been building a position in home goods retailer RH (RH) – formerly known as Restoration Hardware – since the third quarter of 2019. And he's made no secret of his love for Berkshire Hathaway's wholly-owned subsidiary Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Floor & Decor thus appears to be a way to play the housing market, albeit with a somewhat oblique, Buffett-style angle.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 13,145,902
• Value of stake: $475.0 million

Healthcare typically hasn't represented a large percentage of Berkshire Hathaway's assets, but the holding company usually maintains positions in several of the sector's names. That's still the case following BRK.B's exits in Merck and Organon, as Buffett & Co. have decided to add Royalty Pharma (RPRX, $41.70) into the fold.

That said, RPRX isn't your usual pharmaceutical play.

Royalty Pharma, as the name might indicate, is focused on acquiring biopharmaceutical royalties. It doesn't research or develop drugs – it helps provide capital for the companies that do. As the company explains:

"We fund innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry both directly and indirectly – directly when we partner with companies to co-fund late-stage clinical trials and new product launches in exchange for future royalties, and indirectly when we acquire existing royalties from the original innovators."

Through that model, RPRX has gotten a piece of blockbuster drugs such as AbbVie's Imbruvica, Biogen's (BIIB) Tysabri and Pfizer's (PFE) Xtandi.

Buffett spent $475 million to initiate a stake in RPRX during the third quarter, immediately making him a top-10 shareholder with 3.1% of all shares held. But it's still a relatively meager position within the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, at less than 0.2% of equity assets.

Apple (AAPL, $151.12) fanboys and AAPL stock bulls alike are amped for the coming launch of the iPhone 13. And Wedbush Securities says their enthusiasm is very much warranted.

Analyst Daniel Ives writes that recent supply-chain checks suggest a "normal" launch for the latest iteration of Apple's wildly popular smartphone, which he expects to drop in the third week of September.

That doesn't sound like good news for AAPL. But between the global shortage of semiconductors and spread of COVID-19 Delta variant overseas, "normal," in this case, is extremely good news.

Ives' Read on the iPhone

"Asia supply chain builds for iPhone 13 are currently still in the approximately 90 million unit range compared to our initial iPhone 12 reads at 80 million units (pre-COVID), and represent an approximately 10%-plus increase year-over-year out of the gates," Ives writes in a Tuesday note to clients.

Although the iPhone 13 build number "will clearly move around" over the coming months because of the global chip shortage, the analyst believes the data "speaks to an increased confidence with Apple CEO Tim Cook & Co. that this 5G-driven product cycle will extend well into 2022, and should also benefit from a post-vaccine consumer 'reopening environment.'"

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Fanboys will be happy to hear that Ives has increased confidence that the iPhone 13 will offer an "eye-popping" one-terabyte storage option. That's double the maximum storage capacity available in any previous iPhone model.

What It Means for Apple Stock

Apple bulls, meanwhile, should be pleased to know that the iPhone 13 remains the potential catalyst AAPL stock could probably use at this point.

Shares in Apple were up 13.9% for the year-to-date through Aug. 16, lagging the Nasdaq (14.8%), Dow Jones Industrial Average (16.4%) and S&P 500 (19.3%) over that span.

Although investors would surely like to see the world's largest publicly listed company beat the major benchmarks by year-end, let's remember: AAPL stock is nothing if not a long-term holding.

Just ask Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), and arguably the greatest long-term investor of all time. AAPL is by far Buffett's favorite stock, accounting for a whopping 41.5% of Berkshire Hathaway's total portfolio value as of June 30.

Wall Street is firmly in the buy-and-hold camp as well. Of the 42 analysts issuing opinions on AAPL stock tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 25 rate it at Strong Buy, seven say Buy, seven call it a Hold, one has it at Sell and two say Strong Sell. Their consensus recommendation comes to Buy, with high conviction, per S&P GMI.

The Street's average target price of $163.29, however, gives Apple stock implied upside of just 8% over the next year or so.

The bulls, naturally, expect much more from shares. As for Wedbush's Ives, he maintained his Outperform (Buy) rating, calling Apple "a top tech name to own." Meanwhile, the analyst's $185 price target gives AAPL implied upside of about 22% over the next 12 months.

"Our favorite large-cap tech name to play the 5G transformational cycle is Apple," writes Ives, "with the one-two punch of its massive services business and iPhone product cycle translating into a $3 trillion market cap for Cupertino in the next six to 12 months."

Apple's market cap was roughly $2.5 trillion as of Aug. 16.

The stock market made a number of new all-time highs during the second quarter of 2021. Warren Buffett mostly took it as an opportunity to sell ... again.

The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), like he has for several quarters now, primarily pruned the holding company's stock portfolio over the most recent three-month period. Notably, the company made several cuts to its positions in the healthcare sector.

Indeed, Buffett took a scythe to Berkshire Hathaway's bluest of blue-chip pharmaceutical bets. He also lightened up across a number of other investments, some of which were still rather new to the portfolio. And he even exited three minor positions entirely.

On the other side of the ledger, Buffett continued to beef up on a short list of recent favorites in retail and insurance. And although Berkshire Hathaway initiated zero fresh positions, the Oracle of Omaha nonetheless found himself in possession of a brand-new stake. (More on that in a minute.)

We know what the greatest long-term investor of all time has been up to because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires all investment managers with more than $100 million in assets to file a Form 13F quarterly report to disclose any changes in share ownership. These filings add an important level of transparency to the stock market and give Buffett-ologists a chance to get a bead on what he's thinking.

When Buffett initiates a stake in some company, or adds to an existing one, investors read into that as a vote of confidence. But if he pares his holdings in a stock, it can spark investors to rethink their own investments.

Here's the scorecard for what Warren Buffett was buying and selling during the second quarter of 2021, based on Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filed on Aug. 16, 2021, for the period ended June 30, 2021. You can check out the entire list of Buffett stocks here, or continue reading if you're most interested in Buffett's most recent transactions.

And remember: Not all "Warren Buffett stocks" are actually his picks. Some of Berkshire Hathaway's positions are handled by lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

Current share prices are as of Aug. 16, 2021. Holdings data is as of June 30, 2021. Sources: Berkshire Hathaway's SEC Form 13F filed Aug. 16, 2021, for the reporting period ended June 30, 2021; and WhaleWisdom.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 128,888,906 (-0.6% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $7.3 billion

U.S. Bancorp (USB, $57.57) is the nation's fifth-largest bank by assets and America's biggest regional bank. It's also one of the oldest Buffett stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio; the Oracle of Omaha initiated his position in the first quarter of 2006.

Buffett is notoriously tight-lipped about U.S. Bancorp and rarely touches the position. But he clipped it by 0.6%, or 798,178 shares, in the second quarter of 2021. That followed a trimming of 1.1% in Q1.

Scraping just a bit off the USB stake stands in stark contrast to what Buffett has done with so many of Berkshire's other bank stocks of late, however. He mostly has taken a hatchet to his financial-sector holdings. And it's not like the regional lender's returns have justified holding on when Buffett has abandoned so many of its peers.

True, USB's total return beats the broader market's by more than 5 percentage points so far in 2021, but it lags considerably over the past three-, five-, 10- and 15-year periods.

U.S. Bancorp shareholders no doubt appreciate Berkshire's vote of confidence. The holding company's 8.7% stake makes it the largest institutional shareholder, ahead of Vanguard (7.3%) and BlackRock (6.1%).

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 23,123,920 (-2% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $2.4 billion

It's fair to say that when Berkshire Hathaway initiated a new stake in Chevron (CVX, $100.92) during the fourth quarter of 2020, a lot of people thought it could join the ranks of other classic Buffett stocks such as Coca-Cola (KO) and American Express (AXP).

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After all, Chevron checks off a lot of Buffett boxes. It's a well-known American brand, and one that fit very neatly into the value camp as of late last year. It offers an outsized dividend that still yields 5.3% after a 19.5% gain in 2021. And the size of the stake – more than 48 million shares worth $4.1 billion at the time – immediately made it a top-10 holding in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.

But a few months later, Buffett reversed course, jettisoning a little more than half of the position in Q1 2021. He followed that up in Q2 by paring the stake once again, albeit by a much smaller amount this time.

Berkshire Hathaway sliced another 2%, or 548,351 shares, from its CVX stake during the quarter ended June 30. The remaining position of more than 23 million shares was worth $2.4 billion at the end of Q2.

Although energy prices aren't expected to make huge moves in the year ahead, the outlook for oil and gas is much improved and should only get better as the global economy recovers from the depths of the pandemic. And CVX was able to take advantage of the worst of the industry's woes in July 2020 by acquiring Noble Energy in a $5 billion all-stock transaction.

Regardless, Buffett and his lieutenants apparently feel that it's prudent to lighten up on the energy sector, which has cooled off recently amid COVID-19 concerns. CVX, for one, is off almost 8% over the past three months.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 60,000,000 (-10% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $3.6 billion

Warren Buffett tapped the brakes on Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in General Motors (GM, $52.95) for a third consecutive quarter in Q2. He first took a stake in the world's fourth-largest auto manufacturer by production in early 2012. And over the past few years, he became even more bullish, upping Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in 2018, 2019 and as recently as Q3 2020.

But he has clearly decided to slow down.

Berkshire reduced its ownership in the car company by another 10% in Q2, or 7 million shares. That follows cuts of 5.5 million shares (7.6%) in the first three months of 2021, and 7.5 million shares (9.0%) during the final quarter of 2020.

General Motors has always looked like a classic Buffett value bet. After all, there are fewer American brands more iconic than GM. He also has sung the praises of CEO Mary Barra on several occasions. And the stock perennially trades at crazy-cheap multiples of expected earnings.

But with shares up nearly 90% over the past 52 weeks, maybe it was time to take a little more off the top of a profitable investment – even if analysts still like the valuation and potential for resumption of income.

"On valuation, GM shares appear favorably valued based on most standard valuation metrics," writes Argus Research analyst Bill Selesky, who rates GM at Buy. "We also expect the company to soon reinstate its dividend."

Then there's the matter of allocation. Thanks to GM stock’s strong price performance, it still accounts for 1.2% of Berkshire Hathaway's total equity portfolio, down from 1.4% before Buffett's most recent trimming.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 20,527,861 (-10% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $2.3 billion

Buffett first bought AbbVie (ABBV, $118.41) in the third quarter of 2020 as part of a wider bet on the pharmaceutical industry. But most recently, Berkshire Hathaway has cut its position for a second quarter in a row.

The holding company sliced 10% off its ABBV stake in Q2, unloading 2.3 million shares. That follows a reduction of 2.7 million shares, or a bit more than 10%, in the first quarter of 2021. AbbVie now accounts for 0.8% of Berkshire's equity portfolio, down from 0.9% at the end of Q1.

The pharma giant is best known for blockbuster drugs such as Humira and Imbruvica, but analysts are also optimistic about the potential for its cancer-fighting and immunology drugs.

"AbbVie has diversified its revenue and substantially expanded its product portfolio through the acquisition of Allergan," writes Argus Research analyst David Toung, who rates the stock at Buy. "The current portfolio includes a growing oncology franchise anchored by Imbruvica and Venclexta, along with two growth drivers in the immunology space – Skyrizi and Rinvoq."

Another thing that puts ABBV among classic Buffett stocks is the biopharma firm's storied dividend history.

AbbVie is an S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat, by virtue of having raised its dividend every year for nearly half a century. Even better, its current 4.4% dividend yield is one of the highest in the S&P 500, and multiples better than the index's own yield of 1.3%.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 26,294,266 (-15% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.8 billion

Warren Buffett reversed course on Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY, $68.68) for a second consecutive quarter, cutting Berkshire Hathaway's stake by another 15% in Q2.

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Buffett shed 4.7 million shares in the pharmaceutical giant during the second three months of 2021. That follows a 7% haircut in the first quarter after Berkshire Hathaway had bulked up over the previous two quarters.

Around this time last year, Buffett was just getting into BMY, initiating a stake of almost 30 million shares worth $1.81 billion during the third quarter of 2020. He followed that up by adding another 3.4 million shares in Q4, an increase of about 11%.

The investments followed BMY's late 2019 acquisition of pharmaceutical giant Celgene, which was thought to be a big part of Buffett's attraction to the stock. The deal brought in a pair of blockbuster multiple myeloma treatments: Pomalyst and Revlimid, the latter of which also treats mantle cell lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndromes.

That's kind of par for Bristol Myers' course. A long track record of successful acquisitions has kept the pharma company's pipeline primed with big-name drugs over the years. Among the better-known names today are Coumadin, a blood thinner, and Glucophage, for type 2 diabetes.

But if the past two quarters of selling are any indication, Buffett seems to have reset his expectations for BMY going forward.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 4,196,692 (-20% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $590.4 million

Berkshire Hathaway sold a sizable chunk of Marsh McLennan (MMC, $153.57) in Q2 – a reversal of the previous two quarters in which it initiated and then built on a position in the insurance company.

Berkshire has plenty of insurance exposure in its core operations, including Geico, General Re, MLMIC Insurance and Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance, among others. But up until recently, they've never been a major factor in its equity portfolio. In fact, Buffett dumped what little of his Travelers (TRV) stake remained in early 2020.

The wind had changed direction over the past couple quarters. Berkshire initiated a 4.2 million-share position in MMC worth just short of half a billion dollars during Q4 2020. It wasn't a major position, at just 0.2% of the total value of Berkshire's equity holdings. But by virtue of another 1 million shares or so purchased in Q1 2021, the stake had increased by 23% in just a few short months.

Cut to today, however, and Berkshire spent Q2 unloading a fifth of the MMC position it spent the past two quarters building up. The holding company sold more than 1 million shares, or 20% of its MMC stake, leaving it with just less than 4.2 million shares. The remaining MMC position, worth $590 million as of June 30, once again accounts for 0.2% of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 9,157,192 (-51% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $712.2 million

It appears that Warren Buffett has had a change of heart when it comes to Merck (MRK, $77.93).

The pharmaceutical giant is a relatively new addition to the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio and a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Like ABBV and BMY, Buffett first bought MRK in the third quarter of 2020. He bought another 6,294,333 shares in the company in Q4. At that point, the pharma firm accounted for almost 0.9% of BRK.B's equity holdings.

And yet over the past two quarters, Buffett has dumped a total or more than 20 million shares. In Q2 alone, BRK.B shed 9.6 million shares, of 51%, of its MRK stake. That followed first-quarter sales of 10.8 million, or 38% of the holding company's stake at that time.

The Merck position now accounts for just 0.2% of the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.

Buffett maintains long horizons, but it appears that he has quickly soured on the storied stock, even as analysts remain bullish, for the most part.

Central to Merck's fundamental performance is Keytruda, a blockbuster cancer drug approved for more than 20 indications. Additionally, MRK has a favorable patent setup with no key brands losing marketing exclusivity until 2022. Keytruda is on patent until 2028.

The company is, however, undergoing a leadership transition. CEO Robert Davis succeeded Ken Frazier in June. Buffett is known to place a high premium on the management team running any enterprise. Merck also recently spun off its Organon (OGN) women's health business to shareholders. As we'll see below, Berkshire now has a position in OGN as a result.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 1,876,522 (-74% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $50.7 million

Liberty Global bills itself as the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with operations in seven European countries. And the company – represented via Class A (LBTYA) and Liberty Global Class C Shares (LBTYK, $29.16) shares – is one of Berkshire's bets on communications and media companies whipped up by billionaire dealmaker John Malone.

Given recent action in Liberty Global Class C (and, as we shall see, Liberty Global Class A) it appears that Berkshire is continuing to unwind portions of its Malone-backed bets.

Berkshire slashed its stake in LBTYK by 74% in Q2, parting with 5.5 million shares. The remaining stake of 1.9 million shares was worth a mere $50.7 million, as of June 30.

Buffett's investment in the Class A shares dates to the fourth quarter of 2013. Berkshire Hathaway picked up the Class C shares, which have no voting power, in the first quarter of 2014.

The move cut LBTYK's allocation in the BRK.B portfolio to an immaterial 0.02%.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Buffett completely exited his stake in Liberty Global Class A Shares (LBTYA, $29.09) in the second quarter. The move follows a gutting of more than 80% in Q1.

The sales amounted to 3,359,831 shares, which comprised a mere 0.03% of Berkshire Hathaway's total portfolio value at the end of the first quarter.

Buffett first bought Class A shares in the fourth quarter of 2013, paying an average estimated price of $38.69. At the end of Q2, the shares traded at $27.16. No wonder, then, that Buffett has taken a hatchet to this Malone-linked bet.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

It looks like Berkshire Hathaway took advantage of an up market to rid itself of Biogen (BIIB, $343.37).

BRK.B exited its entire stake of 643,022 shares in the biotechnology firm, which it first bought in the fourth quarter of 2019. It was never much of a position for the holding company to begin with. Even at current share prices, the stake would be worth only about $220 million, and that's after BIIB gained 40% for the year-to-date.

Indeed, although Buffett has a history of making bets on the healthcare sector, the small position size always signalled that this might have been a pick from co-portfolio managers Ted Weschler or Todd Combs.

BRK.B paid an average estimated price of $296.73 per share for BIIB. That would give the investment implied upside of about 16% – if sold at current levels. However, if Berkshire sold into a spike in June that saw prices top out at $468.55, Buffett's gain would have been closer to 58%.

Biogen's fate is most heavily tied at the moment to its Alzheimer's treatment, Aduhelm. And lately, those fates haven't looked so good. The Food and Drug Administration in July called for an investigation into the recent approval of the Aduhelm and later narrowed its indications for use.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Axalta Coating Systems (AXTA, $31.42), which makes industrial coatings and paints for building facades, pipelines and cars, joined the ranks of the Buffett stocks in 2015, when Berkshire Hathaway purchased 20 million shares in AXTA from private equity firm Carlyle Group (CG).

The stake made sense at the time. After all, Buffett has long been a fan of the paint industry; Berkshire Hathaway bought house-paint maker Benjamin Moore in 2000.

But the Oracle apparently got weary of the underperformance.

The S&P 500 has delivered a total return of 144% on the nose since the end of Q2 2015, when Berkshire entered its Axalta stake. AXTA, meanwhile, has been good for a 4% decline. Analysts have believed for years that Axalta was a perfect acquisition target for global coatings firms, but an M&A pop never materialized … nor did significant returns.

Berkshire was Axalta's largest investor as recently as Q4 2020, at 10% of shares outstanding.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 1,791,967 (+2% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.2 billion

Warren Buffett has found a winner in RH (RH, $714.98), which many readers know as Restoration Hardware ... and he's not content to sit still on it.

Berkshire, which already is positioned in home furnishings retail via its Nebraska Furniture Mart subsidiary, added more exposure to the space with his Q3 2019 entry into RH, then made a considerable 41% addition to his stake to close out the year.

He has since fidgeted with the position twice in 2021, purchasing 23,900 shares of RH (+1%) in Q1, and adding another 35,519 shares (+2%) in Q2. Buffett has now become the third-largest investor by virtue of owning about 8.5% of all RH shares outstanding.

RH operates 106 retail and outlet stores across the U.S. and Canada. It also owns Waterworks, a high-end bath-and-kitchen retailer with 14 showrooms. While brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled mightily over the past few years thanks in part to the rise of e-commerce, RH has found success catering to the upper crust. And that success continued throughout the COVID pandemic as Americans, forced to work from home, decided to spend on improving their environs.

RH shares have more than tripled since Jan. 1, 2020, up 239% versus a 42% total return for the broader market. Shares are killing it in 2021, too, up 61% to the S&P 500's 20%.

Buffett hasn't said much about RH, making it difficult to tell whether this is his idea, or a project of one of his lieutenants, Ted Weschler or Todd Combs. But the stake does fit broadly with Buffett's worldview. Buffett stocks tend to be bets on America's growth, which is exactly what a bet on housing and housing-related industries is.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 4,396,000 (+7% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $1.0 billion

As we mentioned previously, Buffett loves the insurance business – he just hasn't been too keen on owning mere equity stakes in them. But in Q1 of this year, the industry accounted for two of his five buys, and his lone new position.

London-based Aon (AON, $279.67) offers a wide range of professional services, from insurance and reinsurance to pension administration and financial advising to health insurance.

Like most insurance firms, you won't necessarily expect profits to grow in a perfectly straight line year after year. But revenues have improved without interruption over the past four years, and net income is up in three of the past five years. That operational strength has led to superior returns against both the market and its peers. AON shares have provided a total return (price plus dividends) of 566% over the past decade, versus 305% for the S&P 500 and 354% for the SPDR S&P 500 Insurance ETF (KIE).

Aon continues to outperform in 2021, up 32% versus roughly 20% performances for the broader market and insurance industry. Buffett has rewarded that with a small addition to his current stake – a roughly 300,000-share purchase, growing the position by about 7%.

Berkshire hasn't exactly bet the farm on Aon. The 4.4 million-share position is worth just more than $1 billion, making it just 0.36% of equity assets. Nonetheless, it's one of the few bullish moves that Buffett & Co. made amid another quarterly torrent of sales.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 61,787,910 (+21% from Q1 2021)
• Value of stake: $2.4 billion

Warren Buffett continued to bulk up on Kroger (KR, $43.45), topping up BRK.B's position by more than a fifth after adding a huge chunk in the prior quarter too.

Berkshire Hathaway turned a few heads during the fourth quarter of 2019, when it initiated its 18.9 million-share position in Kroger. But given what was to come, it now looks like a savvy pick.

After all, the massive supermarket chain treated shareholders well during the worst of the pandemic and has continued to outperform in 2021. Indeed, shares are up by nearly 37% year-to-date.

Kroger operates roughly 2,750 retail food stores operating under such banners as Dillons, Ralphs, Harris Teeter and its namesake brand, as well as 1,585 gas stations and even 170 jewelry stores under banners including Fred Meyer Jewelers and Littman Jewelers.

And Buffett is extremely interested in owning more and more of KR.

BRK.B added 10.7 million shares, or 21%, to his Kroger position in Q2. That followed the purchase of 17.5 million shares – a 52% increase in the position – during Q1.

With nearly 62 million shares total, Berkshire Hathaway is the third-largest owner of Kroger shares, with its 8.3% interest coming behind only BlackRock (10.2%) and Vanguard (9.4%).

It's only a middle-of-the-pack position at just 0.8% of Berkshire's equity assets. But it certainly belongs. Unlike other recent new positions such as Amazon.com (AMZN), StoneCo (STNE) and Snowflake (SNOW), old-economy value play Kroger is right in line with Buffett's traditional interests.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 1,550,481
• Value of stake: $46.9 million

Berkshire Hathaway came by way of its Organon (OGN, $34.33) stake through its ownership of Merck stock. The pharmaceutical giant – in which Buffett still owns 9.2 million shares – spun off its women's health business to shareholders in June, providing existing shareholders with one-tenth of a share in Organon for every MRK share they held.

As a result of the move, Berkshire found itself owning 1.6 million shares in OGN worth $46.9 million as of June 30.

Note well that Buffett sold more than half of Berkshire's stake in Merck over the course of Q2.

Organon, accounting for 0.02% of Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio value, is an immaterial position. Whether Buffett keeps it remains to be seen.

Stocks were hit with a second day of selling, as the energy sector (-2.3%) retreated following its recent run higher and data showed new housing starts fell dramatically in April.

"Commodities markets are self-correcting… [and] what sometimes happens is a surge in prices can sap demand," says Michael Reinking, senior market strategist for the New York Stock Exchange.

"This was somewhat on display this morning as the new housing starts number fell 9.5% (month-over-month) following the well-documented surge in lumber prices over the last year. There is still plenty of underlying demand as building permits were flat m/m."

One bright spot today was Walmart (WMT, +2.2%), which jumped after the mega-retailer reported stronger-than-expected Q1 results and raised its full-year forecast.

"Walmart was the top-performing member of the Dow today based on a positive earnings surprise and implications that big box stores are weathering the coronavirus reopening phase in good shape," says David Keller, chief market strategist at StockCharts.com.

"The stock jumped up to $145 earlier today, taking the stock above key trendline resistance and continuing the recovery from a low around $125 in earlier March. Walmart would need to remain above the $135 level to continue its current bullish trend. The real question for WMT is the sustainability of recent price gains in the face of broad selling pressure for equities and uncertainty about economic conditions in the coming months."

WMT's strength wasn't enough to keep the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the black, with the index falling 0.8% to 34,060 on weakness in oil major Chevron (CVX, -3.0%). The S&P 500 Index followed suit, shedding 0.9% to 4,127.

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Other action in the stock market today:

• The Nasdaq Composite couldn't hold on to earlier gains, falling 0.6% to 13,303.
• The Russell 2000 dropped 0.7% to 2,210.
• Home Depot (HD, -1.0%) reported first-quarter earnings and revenues that easily beat estimates. The Dow stock still closed lower amid broad-market headwinds.
• U.S. crude futures gave back 1.2% to settle at $65.49 per barrel.
• Gold futures eked out a fractional gain to end at $1,868.00 an ounce.
• The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) spiked 8.2% to 21.34.
• Several high-profile retail earnings roll in this week, with Cisco Systems (CSCO) among the top ones to watch.

Buffett's Latest Stock Picks

The most important announcement over the past 24 hours, for Buffettologists at least, was the release of Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B) latest holdings list.

Warren Buffett, the famed CEO of Berkshire, revealed his firm's highly anticipated 13F filing on Monday night, showing the Oracle of Omaha and his team did a lot more selling than buying in the first quarter of 2021.

In addition to reversing course on a Dow stock that Berkshire had just piled into in the second half of 2020, Buffett continued to take a hatchet to the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio in big bank stocks. There was some notable action on the buy side, too, with "Uncle Warren" boosting his stake in a major grocery chain and opening a new position, fittingly, in the insurance industry.

To see which stocks Buffett bought and sold to start the year, read on as we take a closer look at the 18 moves he made in his portfolio over the most recent quarter.

Warren Buffett did a lot more selling than buying during the first quarter of 2021 – a period in which markets set record highs seemingly every other week.

The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) pared back or completely exited stakes in financial and energy stocks, trimmed the company's holdings in the pharmaceutical sector, and started only one new position that, fittingly, was in the insurance industry.

Oh, and in one particularly notable about-face, the Oracle of Omaha dumped more than half of Berkshire's stake in a Dow stock he only just purchased in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Despite selling being the main theme of the quarter, Buffett did express votes of confidence in a handful of Berkshire Hathaway's other investments, shoring up stakes in the supermarket and telecommunications sectors, for example.

We know what the greatest long-term investor of all time has been up to because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires all investment managers with more than $100 million in assets to file a Form 13F quarterly to disclose any changes in share ownership. These filings add an important level of transparency to the stock market and give Buffett-ologists a chance to get a bead on what he's thinking.

When Buffett initiates a stake in some company, or adds to an existing one, investors read into that as a vote of confidence. But if he pares his holdings in a stock, it can spark investors to rethink their own investments.

Here's the scorecard for what Warren Buffett was buying and selling during the first quarter of 2021, based on Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filed on May 17, 2021, for the period ended March 31, 2021. You can check out the entire list of Buffett stocks here, or continue reading here if you're most interested in Buffett's recent transactions.

And remember: Not all "Warren Buffett stocks" are actually his picks. Some smaller positions are believed to be handled by lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

Current price and holdings data is as of May 17. Sources: Berkshire Hathaway's SEC Form 13F filed May 17, 2021, for the reporting period ended March 31, 2021; and WhaleWisdom.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 129,687,084 (-1.1% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $7.2 billion

U.S. Bancorp (USB, $62.21) is the nation's fifth-largest bank by assets and America's biggest regional bank. It's also one of the oldest Buffett stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio; the Oracle of Omaha initiated his position in the first quarter of 2006.

Buffett is notoriously tight-lipped about U.S. Bancorp, and rarely touches the position. However, he clipped it by 1.1%, or 1.5 million shares, in the first quarter of 2021. That followed a trimming of 0.6%, or a mere 823,834 shares, in Q4 2020.

Scraping just a bit off the USB stake stands in stark contrast to what Buffett has done with so many of Berkshire's other bank stocks. Mostly, he's taken a hatchet to them. And it's not like the regional lender's returns have justified holding on when Buffett has abandoned so many of its peers.

True, USB's total return beats the broader market's by 23 percentage points so far in 2021, but it lags considerably over the past three-, five-, 10- and 15-year periods.

Still, USB shareholders no doubt appreciate Berkshire's vote of confidence. The holding company's 8.6% stake makes it the largest institutional shareholder, ahead of Vanguard (7.3%) and BlackRock (6.2%).

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 31,032,227 (-6.9% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $2.0 billion

Warren Buffett reversed course on Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY, $65.46) in Q1, cutting Berkshire Hathaway's stake by nearly 7% after bulking up over the previous two quarters.

Buffett shed 2.3 million shares in the pharmaceutical giant during the first three months of 2021. That comes after initiating a stake of almost 30 million shares worth $1.81 billion in the third quarter of 2020. He followed that up by adding another 3.4 million shares in Q4, an increase of about 11%.

BMY beefed up in a big way in late 2019 when it acquired pharmaceutical giant Celgene, and that was thought to be a big part of Buffett's attraction to the stock. The deal brought in a pair of blockbuster multiple myeloma treatments: Pomalyst and Revlimid, the latter of which also treats mantle cell lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndromes.

That's kind of par for Bristol Myers' course. A long track record of successful acquisitions has kept the pharma company's pipeline primed with big-name drugs over the years. Among the better-known names today are Coumadin, a blood thinner, and Glucophage, for type 2 diabetes.

Regardless, this still looks like many classic Buffett stocks in that it's a clear value:

"The stock is attractive at these heavily discounted valuations, in our view, as we see the Celgene deal creating a faster-growing company in the long run with a less concentrated drug portfolio," writes CFRA Research analyst Sel Hardy, who rates BMY at Buy.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 67,000,000 (-7.6% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $3.8 billion

Warren Buffett tapped the brakes on Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in General Motors (GM, $56.04) for a second consecutive quarter in Q1. He first took a stake in the world's fourth-largest auto manufacturer by production in early 2012. And over the past few years, he became even more bullish, upping Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in 2018, 2019 and as recently as Q3 2020.

But now he's clearly decided to slow down. Berkshire reduced its ownership in the car company by 7.6%, or 5.5 million shares, in the first three months of 2021. That follows a cut of 9%, or 7.5 million shares, during the final quarter of 2020.

General Motors has always looked like a classic Buffett value bet. After all, there are fewer American brands more iconic than GM. He also has sung the praises of CEO Mary Barra on several occasions. And the stock perennially trades at crazy cheap multiples of expected earnings.

With shares up nearly 150% over the past 52 weeks, maybe it was time to take a little more off the top of a profitable investment – even if analysts still like the valuation and potential for resumption of income.

"On valuation, GM shares appear favorably valued based on most standard valuation metrics," writes Argus Research analyst Bill Selesky, who rates GM at Buy. "We also expect the company to soon reinstate its dividend."

Then there's the matter of allocation. Thanks to GM's strong price performance, it now accounts for 1.4% of Berkshire Hathaway's total equity portfolio, up from 1.1% before Buffett trimmed the holding.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 22,868,178 (-10.4% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $2.5 billion

Buffett first bought AbbVie (ABBV, $116.89) in the third quarter of 2020 as part of a wider bet on the pharmaceutical industry. Like BMY above, he added to the holding in the fourth quarter before reversing course in Q1.

Most recently, Berkshire Hathaway cut its position by more than 10%, or 2.7 million shares. ABBV now accounts for 0.9% of Berkshire's equity portfolio, down from 1.0% at the end of Q4.

The pharma giant is best known for blockbuster drugs such as Humira and Imbruvica, but analysts are also optimistic about the potential for Rinvoq and Skyrizi, which treat rheumatoid arthritis and plaque psoriasis.

"AbbVie is developing new growth drivers to diversify away from Humira, still the company’s largest product by revenue," writes Argus Research analyst David Toung, who rates the stock at Buy. "These growth drivers include oncology and immunology products launched over the past five years and the portfolio of aesthetics, neuroscience and eye care products that came with the 2020 Allergan acquisition."

Another thing that puts ABBV among classic Buffett stocks is the biopharma firm's storied dividend history.

AbbVie is a Dividend Aristocrat, by virtue of having raised its dividend every year for nearly half a century. Even better, its current 4.5% dividend yield is one of the highest in the S&P 500, at several times better than the index average of about 1.4%.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 43,658,800 (-12.7% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $265.9 million

Berkshire has a number of bets on communications and media companies whipped up by billionaire dealmaker John Malone, one of which is Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI, $5.87).

Malone is chairman of Liberty Media, which owns a massive stake in Sirius XM. The media company reaches roughly 100 million listeners via its core satellite radio business and Pandora, which it acquired in 2018.

And as Kiplinger has noted, the investments in companies that are somehow tied to Malone's truly Byzantine corporate structure could very well be the responsibility of one of Buffett's portfolio managers. Liberty Media was a large position held by Ted Weschler's Peninsula Capital in his pre-Berkshire days.

Regardless, Berkshire's affinity for this position has been waning of late. Most recently, the holding company further reduced its stake in SIRI by nearly 13%, or 6.3 million shares.

That follows a series of sales over the course of 2020. The big hit came in Q2, when Berkshire unloaded more than 82 million shares, or 62% of its stake at the time.

As a result, SIRI has become an ever more negligible portion of Berkshire's equity portfolio. It now accounts for less than 0.10% of its stock holdings, down from 0.12% three months ago.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 10,695,448 (-24.5% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $654.8 million

Berkshire Hathaway slashed its holdings in Brazilian financial technology firm StoneCo (STNE, $59.41) by almost a quarter in Q1.

The company, which provides software and hardware for companies to facilitate credit- and debit-card payments, was already one of the "growthiest" Warren Buffett stocks when BRK.B entered the position in October 2018. But shares really took off amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which enhanced the fortunes of all things e-commerce.

STNE more than doubled in 2020 alone, but like so many hot-growth stocks this year, shares have taken a turn for the worse. Rising fears of interest rate hikes and a general rotation away from growth to more value-oriented names has STNE stock down almost 30% for the year-to-date.

Given the relatively small position in STNE, and the fact that it's a fintech company, you won't be surprised to learn the position was initiated by Buffett lieutenant Todd Combs – with the Oracle of Omaha's blessing, no doubt.

Although StoneCo isn't necessarily a classic Buffett stock, it nonetheless fits with Berkshire Hathaway's general bullishness on companies that facilitate and process payments.

"Payments are a huge deal worldwide," Warren Buffett said at Berkshire's 2018 shareholder meeting.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 17,882,388 (-37.7% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $1.4 billion

Has Warren Buffett had a change of heart when it comes to Merck (MRK, $79.87)?

The pharmaceutical giant is a relatively new addition to the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio and a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Like ABBV and BMY, Buffett first bought MRK in the third quarter of 2020. He bought another 6,294,333 shares in the company in Q4. At that point, the pharma firm accounted for almost 0.9% of BRK.B's equity holdings.

And yet in the most recent quarter, Buffett dumped almost 38%, or 10.8 million shares, of its Merck holdings. The position now accounts for 0.5% of the BRK.B equity portfolio.

Buffett maintains long horizons, so the fact that MRK stock is essentially flat over the past 52 weeks probably means little. And the fundamentals, analysts say, remain favorable.

Central to Merck's fundamental performance is Keytruda, a blockbuster cancer drug approved for more than 20 indications. Additionally, MRK has a favorable patent setup with no key brands losing marketing exclusivity until 2022. Keytruda is on patent until 2028.

The company is, however, undergoing a leadership transition. CEO Ken Frazier will retire in June, to be succeeded by current CFO Robert Davis. Buffett is known to place a high premium on the management team running any enterprise. Merck is also spinning off its women's health business later this year.

"We are mindful of the leadership and organizational transitions underway at the company and the impact of the Organon spinoff on Merck's growth profile," writes Argus Research analyst David Toung, who rates the stock at Buy.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 13,887,037 (-40.7% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $410.8 million

Axalta Coating Systems (AXTA, $32.88), which makes industrial coatings and paints for building facades, pipelines and cars, joined the ranks of the Buffett stocks in 2015, when Berkshire Hathaway purchased 20 million shares in AXTA from private equity firm Carlyle Group (CG).

The stake made sense given that Buffett has long been a fan of the paint industry; Berkshire Hathaway bought house-paint maker Benjamin Moore in 2000.

But it appears that the Oracle is getting weary of the underperformance.

Since the end of Q2 2015, when Berkshire entered its AXTA stake, the stock has produced a 1% loss versus a 127% return for the S&P 500. And while analysts have noted that it's a perfect target to be bought out by global coatings firms, an M&A pop has never materialized.

Berkshire was Axalta's largest investor as of Q4 2020, at 10% of shares outstanding. Interestingly, despite the exodus, BRK.B still is No. 3 at a 5.9% stake, behind BlackRock and Vanguard.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 23,672,271 (-51.2% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $2.5 billion

It's fair to say that when Berkshire Hathaway initiated a new stake in Chevron (CVX, $110.81) during the fourth quarter of 2020, a lot of people thought it could join the ranks of other classic Buffett stocks such as Coca-Cola (KO) and American Express (AXP).

After all, Chevron checks off a lot of Buffett boxes. It's a well-known American brand, and one that fit very neatly into the value camp as of late last year. It offers an outsized dividend that still yields 4.8% after a 31% gain in 2021. And the size of the stake – more than 48 million shares worth $4.1 billion at the time – immediately made it a top-10 holding in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.

But a few months later, Buffett reversed course.

Berkshire jettisoned a little more than half of the position in Q1 2021, unloading 24.8 million shares to bring the position down to 23.7 million. It's not nothing – CVX makes up 0.9% of the portfolio and is still a top-15 position. But Berkshire does drop from being the firm's fifth-biggest shareholder to No. 10.

Although energy prices aren't expected to make huge moves in the year ahead, the outlook for oil and gas is much improved and should only get better as the global economy recovers from the depths of the pandemic. And CVX was able to take advantage of the worst of the industry's woes in July 2020 by acquiring Noble Energy in a $5 billion all-stock transaction.

Regardless, Buffett and his lieutenants apparently felt compelled to get out of a sizable portion of the position while the gettin' was good.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 3,359,831 (-81.3% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $86.2 million

Liberty Global, represented via Class A (LBTYA, $28.10) and Class C (LBTYK, $28.18) shares, is another one of Berkshire's bets on communications and media companies whipped up by billionaire dealmaker John Malone.

And given the latest action in the aforementioned SIRI sale and the reduction in Liberty Global Class A shares, it appears that Berkshire is unwinding a portion of its Malone-backed bets.

Berkshire slashed its stake in LBTYA by more than 80% in the first quarter, parting with more than 14.6 million shares. The move cut LBTYA's allocation in the BRK.B portfolio to 0.03% from an already immaterial 0.16% three months ago.

Liberty Global bills itself as the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with operations in seven European countries. Berkshire's investment in the Class A shares dates to the fourth quarter of 2013. It picked up the Class C shares, which have no voting power, in the first quarter of 2014.

Berkshire now owns just 1.9% of LBTYA's shares outstanding, down from 4.5% at the end of 2020.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 675,054 (-98.7% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $26.4 million

Wells Fargo (WFC, $47.90), which has been in the Berkshire portfolio since 2001, was once among Warren Buffett's favorite stocks.

Now, it's all but gone. Buffett slashed BRK.B's remaining stake almost to the bone in Q1, leaving nothing but a rump position in the nation's third largest bank by assets.

The scandal-plagued mega-bank has been reeling for years in the wake of revelations that it opened millions of phony accounts, modified mortgages without authorization and charged customers for auto insurance they did not need. The business has been slow to recover, as has the stock.

Buffett has sold off Wells Fargo shares in numerous quarters since the start of 2018. It started out as what seemed to be routine paring to keep the position below a regulatory 10% maximum ownership threshold for banks.

However, Buffett dumped more than 55 million shares, or nearly 15% of his position, at the end of 2019. In Q2 2020, he jettisoned 85.6 million shares, or more than a quarter of the remaining stake. In the third quarter, he cut his position by another 46%, and Q4 saw the remainder bleed out another 58%.

Buffett really brought out the wrecking ball in Q1, in the form of a 98.7% cut to BRK.B's remaining stake. What's left of the holding company's ownership interest in the bank is worth a mere $26.4 million.

Berkshire Hathaway, once a top stockholder, now owns 0.02% of Wells Fargo's shares outstanding. This relationship is all but over.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Synchrony Financial (SYF, $46.91) wasn't a particularly longtime nor large position in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, but it was one that jibed with Buffett's affection for credit-card companies and banks.

By the same token, it should be no surprise that SYF was ushered out as Buffett continues to hack away at his financial-sector holdings.

Synchrony, a major issuer of charge cards for retailers, was spun off of GE Capital in 2014. It's both a lender and a payments processor – like Buffett's beloved American Express – but it caters to customers who skew more toward the middle and lower end of the income scale.

Berkshire initiated a position in SYF during the second quarter of 2017, paying an estimated price per share of $30.02. Since the end of Q2 2017, the stock has delivered a total return of 75% – more than 10 percentage points shy of the S&P 500 over that same time frame. The outperformance was even worse before Q1, with the market outpacing SYF 65.9% to 28.1%, but a rebound in the sector helped Synchrony close the gap.

The exit is no small loss for Synchrony; Buffett was the firm's seventh-largest shareholder as of the end of Q4 2020.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

The ideal holding period for a Buffett stock might be forever, but the two stakes he exited in Q1 2020 had been around for shorter than five years each. The aforementioned Synchrony position was established in the first half of 2017, and Berkshire first entered Suncor Energy (SU, $24.08) in the late innings of 2018.

He's out of both now.

Suncor – an integrated energy giant whose operations span oil sands developments, offshore oil production, biofuels and even wind energy – also sells its refined fuel via a network of more than 1,500 Petro-Canada stations. And for a few months, it was the lone position in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.

However, when Chevron entered the fray in Q4 2020, Berkshire unloaded a healthy 27% of its SU stake. Buffett quickly finished the job during the first quarter, ditching his remaining position of nearly 14 million shares.

It's hard to blame Buffett too much. As of the end of 2020, he was still 35% underwater on his original investment thanks primarily to the COVID-sparked selloff of energy names. Though a little more patience might have paid off: SU has recovered a lot of ground since the start of 2021, with SU shares up a healthy 40% year-to-date.

Funnily enough, this was the second time Buffett quickly dabbled with Suncor. Berkshire Hathaway originally invested in the energy giant during 2013, then sold the entirety of the position three years later.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 1,756,448 (+1.4% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $1.0 billion

RH (RH, $633.31) continues to do big things for Berkshire.

The upscale home-goods retailer, which many readers know as Restoration Hardware, is up more than 40% year-to-date (vs. 11% for the S&P 500) amid a still-red-hot real estate market. Indeed, shares have more than quadrupled since this time last year, when many Americans started to realize that working from home was going to last more than just a few weeks, and thus began making plans to improve their new workplace environs.

Berkshire boasts Nebraska Furniture Mart among its subsidiaries, but added to its home furnishings exposure in Q3 2019 when it brought RH into the fold. RH operates 106 retail and outlet stores across the U.S. and Canada, and owns Waterworks – a high-end bath-and-kitchen retailer with 14 showrooms.

Buffett made a considerable addition (41%) to his RH stake in Q4 2019, then sat on the position for a few quarters before topping it up at the end of last year. He's added to it again to kick off 2021, albeit by a mere 23,900 shares, or a little more than 1%.

While brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled mightily over the past few years thanks in part to the rise of e-commerce, RH has found success catering to the upper crust. That success has since been amplified by the COVID pandemic and a shift in where Americans have been putting their money to work.

It's hard to tell whether this was an Oracle of Omaha buy, or a project of one of his lieutenants, Ted Weschler or Todd Combs. Buffett has been mostly mum on RH. Still, the stake fits broadly with Buffett's worldview. Buffett stocks tend to be bets on America's growth, which is exactly what a bet on housing and housing-related industries is.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 158,824,575 (+8.3% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $9.2 billion

Warren Buffett is quickly warming to Verizon Communications (VZ, $57.94) – a fresh position he added a mere quarter ago.

Verizon already looked at home in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. While BRK.B famously doesn't pay out a dividend, Buffett is happy to collect them. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average component has paid an ample dividend, currently yielding more than 4%, for well more than a decade. Indeed, its ability to pay a healthy distribution puts it among the top dividend stocks for retirement investors.

When Berkshire initiated its stake in Verizon in Q4 2020, it bought with both hands, picking up 146.7 million shares valued at $8.62 billion. That was good for a 3.2% weight in the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.

That number is a little bigger now.

In the first quarter of 2020, Warren Buffett added more than 12 million shares, improving the stake by 8%, to bring Verizon's weight in the portfolio to 3.4%. Berkshire also remains the fourth-largest owner of VZ shares at 3.8%, behind institutional investors Vanguard (7.8%), BlackRock (7.4%) and State Street Global Advisors (3.9%).

Bulls like Verizon for both its growth prospects in the era of 5G networking, its defensive characteristics and the reliable income stream it delivers to investors.

"With a safe dividend yield and low leverage, we believe the market favors Verizon's 5G strategy and simpler story," say Raymond James equity research analysts. "Whether we are in an expansion or a contraction, consumers' internet and mobile plans may be the last thing they're willing to give up when times get tough."

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 5,287,526 (+23.9% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $644.0 million

Marsh McLennan (MMC, $134.49) is another new Buffett position that he apparently couldn't get enough of. And in this case, Berkshire was much more aggressive about its second bite.

Berkshire has plenty of insurance exposure in its core operations, including Geico, General Re, MLMIC Insurance and Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance, among others. But up until recently, they've never been a major factor in its equity portfolio. In fact, Buffett dumped what little of his Travelers (TRV) stake remained in early 2020.

But that wind has changed direction over the past couple quarters, via both his MMC addition and Berkshire's lone new stake in Q1 2021, which we'll get to momentarily.

As for Marsh McLennan: Berkshire initiated a 4.2 million-share position worth just short of half a billion dollars during Q4 2020. It wasn't a major position, at just 0.2% of the total value of Berkshire's equity holdings – and it still isn't. But by virtue of another 1 million shares or so purchased in Q1 2021, the stake has increased by 23% in just a few short months.

Shares in MMC, which provides various risk, strategy and consulting services, are longtime market laggards. But to Buffett's credit, they've outperformed so far in 2021, up nearly 15% for the year to date. The company also pays a modest dividend yielding 1.4% at current prices.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 51,060,296 (+52.3% from Q4 2020)
• Value of stake: $1.8 billion

The biggest addition among existing Buffett stocks during 2021's first quarter was Kroger (KR, $37.39) – the massive supermarket chain that treated shareholders well during the worst of the pandemic.

Kroger operates roughly 2,750 retail food stores operating under such banners as Dillons, Ralphs, Harris Teeter and its namesake brand, as well as 1,585 gas stations and even 170 jewelry stores under banners including Fred Meyer Jewelers and Littman Jewelers.

Berkshire Hathaway turned a few heads during the fourth quarter of 2019, when it initiated its 18.9 million-share position in Kroger. But given what was to come, it now looks like a savvy pick. From peak to trough, the S&P 500 lost about 34% during the COVID bear market; KR shares appreciated by 5% during that time period.

Of course, as investors' focus started to shift away from essential retailers to opening plays, Kroger has underperformed. It's up just 21% since the market bottom versus an 86% recovery for the broader market.

Buffett is nonetheless extremely interested in owning more KR.

Buffett added 8.6 million shares, or 34% to his Kroger position in Q4 2020. And he has followed that up with another 17.5 million shares, or 52%, through the first three months of 2021. Berkshire Hathaway is now the third-largest owner of Kroger shares, with its 6.7% behind only BlackRock (9.8%) and Vanguard (9.7%).

It's only a middle-of-the-pack position at just 0.7% of Berkshire's equity assets. But it certainly belongs. Unlike other recent new positions such as Amazon.com (AMZN), StoneCo, Biogen (BIIB) and Snowflake (SNOW), old-economy value play Kroger is right in line with Buffett's traditional interests.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 4,096,146
• Value of stake: $942,564,000

As we mentioned previously, Buffett loves the insurance business – he just hasn't been too keen on owning mere equity stakes in them. But in Q1, the industry accounted for two of his five buys, and his lone new position.

London-based Aon (AON, $255.20) offers a wide range of professional services, from insurance and reinsurance to pension administration and financial advising to health insurance.

Like most insurance firms, you won't necessarily expect profits to grow in a perfectly straight line year after year. But revenues have improved without interruption over the past four years, and net income is up in three of the past five years.

That operational strength has led to superior returns against both the market and its peers. AON shares have provided a total return (price plus dividends) of 434% over the past decade, versus 285% for the S&P 500 and 226% for the SPDR S&P 500 Insurance ETF (KIE).

Berkshire hasn't exactly bet the farm on Aon. The roughly 4 million-share position is worth less than $1 billion, making it just 0.35% of equity assets. Nonetheless, it's one of the few aggressively bullish moves that Buffett & Co. made amid another quarterly torrent of sales.

2021 could be a strong year of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

Last year was a strange one for dealmaking. 2020 started out riding the momentum of a robust fourth quarter in 2019, with several deals topping $10 billion or more. But once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, M&A activity dried up as companies of all sizes figured out what needed to be done to keep their businesses liquid.

In the first two months of 2020, the average number of M&A deals per month was 291. That fell to 236 between March and June, before jumping to 379 in the second half of the year. That works out to a monthly average of 317 merger-and-acquisition deals done last year, just slightly behind the 335 transactions done, on average, per month in 2019.

However, Morgan Stanley analysts believe 2021 will be a more fruitful year for M&A action.

"Companies are more comfortable allocating capital now than earlier in the pandemic. M&A remains one of the most attractive ways for them to achieve growth, making 2021 another potentially busy year," says Brian Healy, co-head of Mergers & Acquisitions (Americas) at Morgan Stanley.

With capital costs incredibly low, a rebounding economy post-vaccine and a need to digitize businesses to protect against the next coronavirus, CEOs may feel the need to acquire other companies to meet their growth and operational requirements.

At the same time, stock prices remain relatively overvalued, suggesting that many of the merger-and-acquisition deals in 2021 could be all-stock transactions. Six out of the 10 transactions in this article involve some use of stock. Investors can expect more of the same as we move into summer and fall.

That said, let's take a look at 11 noteworthy M&A deals that investors should be focused on in 2021.

Data is as of May 12.

• Market value: $52.6 billion
• Target company: Kansas City Southern
• Deal value: $25.0 billion

Proponents of free trade will like Canadian Pacific Railway's (CP, $395.06) proposed $25 billion cash-and-stock purchase of Kansas City Southern (KSU). Together, the combined entity will have 20,000 miles of railroad, generate roughly $8.7 billion in annual revenue and employ almost 20,000 people.

The acquisition is the biggest M&A deal so far in 2021. It's also the second-biggest railroad merger ever, only falling behind Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B) purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $26.4 billion in 2010.

Interestingly, it will be the first rail network that connects Canada with the U.S. and Mexico, making Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) – the new name of the combined railroad – truly North American.

Canadian Pacific will pay $275 a share for KSU stock. That's a 23% premium based on Kansas City Southern's March 19, 2021, closing price. Kansas City Southern's shareholders will receive $90 in cash and 0.489 CP share for each common KSU share held.

CP shareholders will own 75% of the company, with Kansas City Southern shareholders owning the rest.

The combined entity will generate 53% of its freight revenue in Canada, 33% in the U.S. and 14% in Mexico. The companies expect to generate $780 million in annualized synergies within three years of closing the deal in mid-2022.

CP CEO Keith Creel will run Canadian Pacific Kansas City from its global headquarters in Calgary, Alberta.

• Market value: $13.4 billion
• Target company: Athene Holding
• Deal value: $11.0 billion

Alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management (APO, $57.79) announced on March 8 that it would acquire fixed annuity provider Athene Holding (ATH) for $11 billion. The all-stock M&A transaction will see Athene shareholders receive 1.149 shares of Apollo stock for each ATH share held.

Apollo's shareholders will own 76% of the combined entity, with Athene's shareholders owning the rest. Apollo launched Athene in 2009. APO currently owns 35% of the retirement services company.

In 2020, Apollo Global Management stepped in to help keep struggling businesses afloat that suffered during the pandemic. In this regard, the merger has many suggesting the combined entity is the new Berkshire Hathaway, which gave an assist to companies during the 2008 financial crisis.

"No one has done what we are doing," says Marc Rowan, who will become CEO of the combined businesses, discussing the merits of the M&A deal. "Yes, there are elements of Berkshire Hathaway… but we are doing something in our own way with our own strategy and with our own rationale."

Apollo will move to a single class of voting stock with equal rights for each share as part of the transaction. The combined entity will have a pro forma market cap of $29 billion, likely qualifying it for inclusion in the S&P 500 Index.

It plans to pay an annual dividend of $1.60 per share, increasing it based on growth in the business.

• Market value: $198.8 billion
• Target company: Slack Technologies
• Deal value: $27.7 billion

Slack Technologies (WORK) shareholders got an early Christmas present last December when Marc Benioff-led Salesforce.com (CRM, $215.56) swooped in and offered to buy the enterprise communication platform company for $27.7 billion.

The cash-and-stock transaction sees Slack shareholders receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 share of CRM stock for each WORK share held. Salesforce's offer represents a 54% premium to Slack's share price before news of the merger and acquisition began to circulate last fall.

Salesforce is buying Slack to integrate its communication platform into its existing suite of cloud-based sales-related software. Together, it will provide the companies with a more well-rounded set of tools for serving their end-user customers.

"Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world," said Benioff in a statement about the proposed transaction.

While Benioff has executed more than 60 acquisitions over the past 21 years, the Slack purchase is Salesforce's largest ever. The marriage gives CRM a leg up in its fight against Microsoft. And Slack will now have greater resources to go head-to-head with Microsoft Teams.

Benioff would like to see Salesforce.com's revenue hit $35 billion by fiscal 2024. The addition of Slack should add more than $1 billion in annual revenue by 2022.

CRM expects the transaction to close by July.

• Market value: $100.5 billion
• Target company: Tidal
• Deal value: $302.0 million

M&A news that Square (SQ, $220.65) was buying a piece of Tidal, the music-streaming service owned by business mogul Jay-Z, first surfaced in December. On March 4, it became official with Square announcing that it would pay $297 million in cash and stock for majority control of Tidal, and in late April, the deal closed at a final price of $302 million.

Tidal will operate independently alongside Square's Seller and Cash App ecosystems, and Jay-Z will join Square's board. SQ does not expect Tidal to make an impact on sales or profits in 2021.

CEO Jack Dorsey believes that Square's entrepreneurial tools will help musicians support their work.

"I said from the beginning that Tidal was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers," Jay-Z stated in the press release announcing the deal.

"Artists deserve better tools to assist them in their creative journey. Jack and I have had many discussions about Tidal's endless possibilities that have made me even more inspired about its future."

Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, bought Tidal in early 2015 for $56 million.

• Market value: $1.8 trillion
• Target company: ZeniMax Media
• Deal value: $7.5 billion

The M&A approval process began in September with the announcement Microsoft (MSFT, $246.23) would acquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in cash. ZeniMax Media is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, one of the world's largest privately owned developers of video games. Its franchise includes The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

It ended March 8 after the European Union gave its blessing to Microsoft's bid for the gaming company. The deal brings Xbox's first-party games studios to 23, 10 more than Sony (SONY).

Bethesda's management will continue to operate the gaming business as a separate unit at Microsoft, just as LinkedIn and GitHub do.

Some consumers are worried the deal will reduce Bethesda games' availability on platforms other than Xbox. However, Xbox chief Phil Spencer maintains that the Xbox Game Pass subscription service launched in 2017 has virtually eliminated the need for exclusivity.

Both Microsoft and Bethesda believe that the most important part of Game Pass is providing gamers the opportunity to play whatever they want, wherever they want, whether it's on a console, PC, smartphone or anywhere else people play video games.

• Market value: $81.2 billion
• Target company: Fit Analytics
• Deal value: $124.4 million

Snap (SNAP, $53.29), the owner of social media platform Snapchat, confirmed on March 17 that it would buy Fit Analytics, a Berlin-based startup whose technology helps online shoppers find proper sizing for apparel and footwear purchases.

Also, the technology provides brands such as North Face and Patagonia with personalization tools and analytics to increase their e-commerce sales. More than 18,000 retailers already use Fit Analytics' technology.

"Our main focus going forward will be to scale the Fit Analytics business and work with Snap to grow their shopping platform, leveraging our technology and expertise," says Sebastian Schulze, co-founder and CEO of Fit Analytics. "Our teams will be jointly executing on next-gen shopping, fashion and style offerings."

The M&A move for SNAP seems to keep up with Pinterest (PINS) and Amazon.com in the rapidly growing "social shopping" segment of the e-commerce market. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel stated in the company's fourth-quarter 2020 conference call that there is a huge opportunity to innovate in e-commerce. No longer is online retail only about price and convenience. It's also about the experience.

Mergers and acquisitions such as scooping up Fit Analytics will help Snap deliver for its 265 million daily active users (DAUs). Investors should expect further purchases in this area in the future.

Originally called UPcload, Fit Analytics got its start in 2011.

• Market value: $91.5 billion
• Target company: IHS Markit
• Deal value: $44.5 billion

IHS Markit (INFO) announced on March 11 that its shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve its sale to S&P Global (SPGI, $379.67) for $39 billion in equity and the assumption of $4.8 billion in debt.

The all-stock transaction will see stockholders receive 0.2838 SPGI share for every one held in INFO. SPGI shareholders will own 67.75% of the combined entity with IHS Markit shareholders owning the rest.

As a result, 76% of the combined company's $11.6 billion in estimated pro forma revenue will be recurring in nature, growing between 6.5% and 8% annually. On the bottom line, it expects to generate an additional 200 basis points of margin to its EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes and amortization) profit.

As for cost- and revenue-synergies, the new firm expects to find $830 million annually, which works out to an additional $680 million in EBITA. By 2023, SPGI expects to generate more than $5 billion in free cash flow, returning up to 85% of it through dividends and share repurchases.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is likely to take a close look at the merger and acquisition despite the fact the two companies' businesses don't overlap too much.

On March 10, the DOJ made what's known as a second request to both SPGI and INFO. It's merely a request for more information. The parties continue to believe the merger will be completed at some point in the second half of 2021.

• Market value: $1.6 trillion
• Target company: Wondery
• Deal value: $300.0 million (estimate only)

On the second to last day of 2020, Amazon.com (AMZN, $3,223.91) announced that it would buy innovative podcast publisher Wondery. Although no terms for the M&A activity were disclosed, The Wall Street Journal reported in early December that AMZN was in talks to buy Wondery for $300 million, possibly more.

AMZN believes that the addition of Wondery will add to Amazon Music's customer experience. The company's music platform only launched podcasts last September, and the acquisition of Wondery should accelerate its growth in this area.

Wondery's top-rated podcasts include Dirty John, Business Wars and The Shrink Next Door.

Investors might be aware of Amazon's growing advertising revenues. Analysts estimate that they'll grow to $26.1 billion this year and to $85.2 billion by 2026. According to Podtrac, Wondery is the fourth-largest U.S. podcast publisher with more than 10 million unique listeners every month.

There are several ways that Amazon.com can monetize its podcasts. One of them is through targeted advertising. Another could be to add a subscription offering that eliminates ads.

Any way you slice it, AMZN didn't buy Wondery because it loves its podcasts. It bought Wondery because it can help it continue to build the Amazon Prime ecosystem.

Amazon had $26 billion in free cash flow at the end of 2020. The company's acquisition of Wondery was a drop in the bucket from a monetary perspective, but oh, so strategic.

• Market value: $13.4 billion
• Target company: Michaels Companies
• Deal value: $5.0 billion

One of the areas in which Apollo Global Management excels is private equity. That's why you're seeing it on this list a second time. The first transaction with Athene Holding is more of a traditional merger and acquisition. In contrast, the agreement to purchase Michaels Companies for $3.3 billion in equity and the assumption of $1.7 billion in debt is part of its job as a private equity investor.

Apollo paid $22 per share to acquire Michaels, a 47% premium to its share price the day before speculation appeared in the media about the purchase.

APO's private equity division has acquired more than 150 companies since its inception. It currently has $81 billion in assets under management (AUM) with its latest private equity fund, Fund IX, raising $24.7 billion in commitments from limited partner investors.

Some of Apollo's current investments in the consumer and retail area include Qdoba, the second-largest Mexican fast-casual restaurant in America. It also owns The Fresh Market, a North Carolina-based chain of gourmet grocery stores. Michaels joined this portfolio in mid-April.

Michaels reported fourth-quarter and full-year results in early March. In fiscal 2020, the craft store had revenues of $1.92 billion, same-store sales growth of 4.8% and adjusted net income of $347.0 million – the latter 7.2% higher than a year earlier.

APO is likely to ratchet up growth and then take it public in the next 3-5 years.

• Market value: $384.9 million
• Target company: eToro
• Deal value: $9.6 billion

While Robinhood has filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public through a traditional initial public offering (IPO), Israeli rival eToro has chosen to go a different route through an M&A with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Fintech Acquisition Corp. V (FTCV, $11.26).

The merger values the combined businesses at $9.6 billion. Institutional investors such as Fidelity and Third Point will commit $650 million in additional investment to the deal. Post-merger, eToro will have $800 million in net cash on its balance sheet to fund future growth.

In 2020, eToro had $605 million in revenue, and it added more than 5 million users to its social investment network. It now has more than 1.2 million funded accounts. The company plans to launch U.S. stock trading in the second half of this year.

As a result of the merger, eToro shareholders will own 91% of the combined entity. The SPAC sponsor and shareholders and investors in the private placement will hold the rest.

eToro was founded in 2007. Its social trading network got its start three years later, introducing Bitcoin onto its platform in 2013. In 2008, eToro had just 174,000 registered users. Today, that's close to 19 million.

It estimates that the total addressable market for equities globally is $78 trillion, with digital platforms such as eToro accounting for just 20%.

FTCV shareholders must approve the combination before the merger can be completed.

• Market value: $7.3 billion
• Target company: GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS)
• Deal value: $30 billion

No one can accuse General Electric (GE) CEO Larry Culp of sitting on his hands since taking over the top job in October 2018. Since then, he's been remaking the industrial conglomerate, opting to focus on a few things it does well.

His latest imprint on the company was the March 12 announcement that GE was selling its aircraft leasing business to AerCap Holdings (AER, $55.99) for $30 billion. The deal allows GE to focus on its power, renewable energy, aviation and healthcare businesses.

In addition to receiving $24 billion in cash from AerCap, GE will own 46% of the combined entity of AER and GECAS. The aircraft leasing business is a part of GE Capital. Once the sale is completed, GE Capital will be folded into GE, and will no longer operate as a separate unit.

GE plans to use the proceeds along with existing cash to reduce its debt by $30 billion. That's 40% of its current debt. Since Culp's arrival, including its latest plans, GE will have cut its debt by more than $70 billion.

It will take a $3 billion non-cash charge in its first quarter of 2021 due to the M&A transaction.

The AerCap/GECAS combination creates an aircraft leasing behemoth that will use its scale to reduce its cost of capital while maintaining a diversified portfolio of customers. While it's likely to face intense scrutiny from regulators, the impact of COVID-19 and a flood of new aircraft-leasing firms in the last 10 years might soften their outlook on such a merger.

Here's something for investors to celebrate on Earth Day 2021: Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) matters have never been more important to shareholders and, by extension, the folks leading the nation's publicly traded companies.

As investors' focus on ESG stocks has grown, sustainability reporting has gone mainstream. Bank of America Securities recently found that 90% of companies in the S&P 500 publish corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, up from 20% in 2011.

And that's not just because corporations are bending to societal pressures. It turns out that taking ESG issues seriously is good for the bottom line.

"It pays to be green," say Bank of America Securities equity and quant strategists Savita Subramanian and Marisa Sullivan. "We see higher multiples for low emissions, net zero targets, and water efficiency."

Even members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average – that old and elite bastion of just 30 blue-chip companies – are increasingly concerned with how they measure up when it comes to ESG matters. However, it might come as a disappointment to some investors that only a third of the Dow's constituents rank as ESG leaders in their respective industries.

MSCI, the investment research firm specializing in indexes, portfolio analysis and various analytic tools, has set itself up as a leader in ESG ratings. The firm maintains MSCI ESG ratings on nearly 3,000 companies, and it has become a go-to provider of information for investors who hold ESG issues close to their investment processes and hearts. We decided to see where all 30 Dow companies rank as ESG stocks using MSCI ratings, which range from industry leader (AAA, AA), to average (A, BBB, BB) to laggard (B, CCC), and found that just 10 of them are considered "leaders."

So read on as we look at the 10 best ESG stocks within the Dow 30. Happily, in many cases, it does indeed pay to appear to be green. Dow stocks with high ESG scores often happen to be some of analysts' favorite blue-chip stocks to buy, too.

Data is as of April 20, courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence, MSCI and YCharts, unless otherwise noted.

• Market value: $116.6 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.2%
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

The first of the Dow's AA-rated ESG stocks is American Express (AXP, $145.10), which also gets a consensus recommendation of Buy from Wall Street analysts. The pros are especially impressed by the credit card company's outsized long-term growth prospects.

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Indeed, the Street expects AXP to deliver average annual earnings per share (EPS) growth of more than 40% over the next three to five years.

And for what it's worth, AmEx is one of Warren Buffett's all-time favorite stocks. The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway first bought shares in the firm in 1963 and remains its largest shareholder (by far!) today.

That said, some analysts are concerned about the slow recovery of spending on travel and entertainment as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic.

"Non-travel and entertainment (T&E) spending has recovered to pre-Covid levels and actually grew 1% in the quarter, but T&E remains very depressed (down 69% YoY for Q3)," writes CFRA Research analyst Chris Kuiper, who rates AXP at Hold.

For investors who put ESG at the forefront of their investment process, they'll be happy to hear that American Express' rating makes it a leader in the consumer finance industry. Indeed, only 7% of the firms in AXP's industry received an AA rating.

American Express stands out in scores for corporate governance, human capital development, privacy and data security, and carbon emissions. It gets average marks for corporate behavior, consumer financial protection and access to finance.

Lastly, MCSI says AXP is not a laggard on any of the key issues evaluated for the company's industry.

• Market value: $149.2 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.7%
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

Amgen (AMGN, $259.14), which replaced Pfizer (PFE) in the Dow last year, gets an AA ESG rating from MSCI – a level it first attained in June 2019.

Only 39 biotech companies, or 13% of the sector, score an AA rating from MSCI, making Amgen an industry leader.

Although MSCI considers AMGN to be an industry laggard when it comes to product safety and quality, that assessment is offset by average grades for corporate governance and corporate behavior.

What puts Amgen among the top ESG stocks in the Dow are its industry-leader rankings for human capital development, access to healthcare, and toxic emissions and waste. The bottom line is that AMGN compares very favorably against industry peers on ESG matters.

As for Wall Street's view of Amgen's stock, it leans bullish. Analysts' consensus recommendation stands at Buy, according to a survey by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Of the 31 analysts covering Amgen tracked by S&P GMI, nine rate it at Strong Buy, five say Buy, 14 call it a Hold, one says Sell and one calls it a Strong Sell. One analyst has no opinion.

"Amgen is posting solid adjusted earnings, driven by innovative drugs, including biosimilars, and investing its strong cash flow into R&D and acquisitions, such as its recently announced purchase of Five Prime," writes Argus Research analyst David Toung, who rates the stock at Buy. "Another growth driver is Otezla, an immunology drug acquired from Bristol Myers Squibb.

"We also expect the company to benefit from the launch of new pipeline products and from its collaboration agreement with Chinese biotech company Beigene."

• Market value: $218.3 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.9%
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

Cisco Systems (CSCO, $51.79) gets a consensus Buy recommendation from the Street – and even higher marks from MSCI when it comes to its commitment to ESG principles.

CSCO's rating of AA puts it in fairly elite company within the technology hardware, storage & peripherals industry, MSCI says. Indeed, only about a fifth of the industry scores a rating as high as Cisco's – and none get the ultimate rank of AAA.

Cisco's industry leadership status stems from top marks on human capital development and opportunities in clean technology. It gets average grades for controversial sourcing, supply chain labor standards and corporate behavior, among other key issues. Furthemore, CSCO is not a laggard on any of the key issues MSCI evaluates for the company's industry.

The pros aren't quite as upbeat on CSCO as a stock. Yes, of the 26 analysts covering Cisco tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, nine rate it at Strong Buy, six say Buy and 11 have it at Hold. However, analysts' average target price of $53.50 gives CSCO implied upside of just about 3% in the next year or so.

Whether some analysts hike their price targets or downgrade shares remains to be seen. Analysts don't exactly expect spectacular growth from the company anytime soon, either. The Street forecasts average annual EPS growth of just 5.4% over the next three to five years.

CSCO is transitioning from being heavily dependent on hardware such as internet routers and switches to higher-growth software and cloud services. The bull case rests, in part, on accelerating corporate spending on information technology (IT) as the economy reopens and workers return to their offices.

"Strong IT spending should prove a tailwind to Cisco estimates through fiscal 2022," writes Wolfe Research analyst Jeff Kvaal, who upgraded the stock to Outperform (Buy, essentially) from Peer Perform (Hold) in mid-April.

• Market value: $233.3 billion
• Dividend yield: 3.1%
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

Although the pandemic put a crimp on sales at restaurants, bars, cinemas, live sports and other events, analysts are optimistic about Coca-Cola's (KO, $54.17) prospects as a recovery stock, giving shares a high conviction recommendation of Buy.

The drinks giant also is among the best ESG stocks in the Dow, claiming a MSCI rating of AA. That makes it a leader among 53 companies in the beverages industry. Only 15% of the industry gets an AA rating, with another 9% ranking at the highest level of AAA.

Coca-Cola stands out for high scores on packaging materials and waste, health and safety, and product carbon footprint. Its overall score gets dinged by being a laggard on opportunities on health and nutrition. KO is considered average by industry standards on water stress and corporate behavior, among other issues, according to MSCI.

As for the Street's view? Eleven analysts rate Coca-Cola's shares at Strong Buy, six say Buy and none call it a Hold. They expect the company to deliver average annual EPS growth of 6.6% over the next three to five years, per S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Analysts at UBS Global Research are bullish on KO, citing improving volumes, among other factors.

"We maintain our Buy on KO as a topline recovery story overlaying an accelerated business transformation that should lead to compounding recovery at the bottom line," writes UBS analyst Sean King in a note to clients. "We are encouraged by volume trends that tracked pre-pandemic levels beginning in March and believe KO will continue to outpace the asynchronous economic recovery."

Investors also should not forget Coca-Cola's status as a Dividend King. The beverage company has lifted its payout annually for almost 60 years.

• Market value: $348.4 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.0%
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

Investors who are conscientious about ESG factors can feel good about Home Depot (HD, $323.96).

A country basically cooped up at home has been great for business at the nation's largest home improvement retailer – and analysts see more upside ahead for HD stock. At the same time, Home Depot corporate gets good marks when it comes to MSCI's ESG assessment.

HD's AA ESG rating makes it a leader among 89 companies in the retail – consumer discretionary industry, per MSCI. Only 12% of the industry's firms score an AA rating, while just 3% get MSCI's coveted AAA. And Home Depot has maintained that rating for four consecutive years.

The home improvement chain's spot among the Dow's top ESG stocks is chalked up to its attention to chemical safety, product carbon footprint and corporate governance. Labor relations, raw material sourcing, privacy and data security, and corporate behavior are relevant areas where HD gets average only marks vs. peers.

In no key issue areas was Home Depot found to be an industry laggard, MSCI notes.

Meanwhile, the Street leans heavily bullish on the name, thanks in part to HD's success in navigating both the depths of the pandemic and the current nascent recovery.

"HD's performance supports our thesis that the company is well positioned to deliver future earnings growth and market-share gains," writes Argus Research analyst Christopher Graja, who rates the stock at Buy. "With excellent financial strength, we believe that the shares stand out for diversified investors who are looking for exposure to discretionary retail."

Of the 35 analysts tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence covering HD stock, 17 rate it at Strong Buy, eight say Buy, nine have it at Hold and one calls it a Strong Sell. They expect HD to generate average annual EPS growth of 8.2% over the next three to five years.

• Market value: $157.9 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.6%
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

Honeywell (HON, $227.33), which returned to the Dow last year to replace the former United Technologies, is already one of its top ESG stocks.

Honeywell scores well against its 35 industry peers by MSCI's ESG ratings. Only 14% of the industrial conglomerates industry can equal its AA mark, and just 8% of its peers score higher.

The Street is similarly optimistic about its growth prospects and potential for share-price appreciation. The Buy-rated company – with 8 Strong Buy, five Buy, nine Hold and one Sell recommendation – is forecast to generate average annual EPS growth of more than 11% over the next three to five years.

With a gain of just 7% for the year-to-date through April 20, shares in Honeywell have lagged peers – as well as the Dow – but bulls say it's only a matter of time before they catch up.

"Honeywell is a leading blue-chip industrial company that we think is poised to generate low double-digit earnings growth over the long term," writes Argus Research analyst John Eade, who rates shares at Buy. "We believe that Honeywell will continue to benefit from its diverse product lines, as well as from its strong presence in the commercial aerospace and commercial construction markets."

The analyst adds that the pandemic "upended the global economy and Honeywell's record of growth. We think both will eventually recover." Eade also likes the "well-managed company's history of paying and raising the dividend." The payout has more than doubled since 2014, from 45 cents per share to its current 93 cents.

On the ESG front, HON stands out among peers for its corporate behavior, MSCI says. It gets average marks for corporate governance and opportunities in clean tech, and is an industry laggard for its labor management practices.

• Market value: $123.3 billion
• Dividend yield: 4.7%
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

International Business Machines (IBM, $138.16) recently reported better-than-expected top- and bottom-line results for its first quarter of 2021, thanks to growth in cloud computing and solid contributions from its mainframe business.

It's just what long-suffering shareholders in Big Blue needed to hear, and shows that the tech giant's operating performance might be catching up to what are already high marks on ESG issues.

IBM has been an industry leader when it comes to ESG concerns for several years now. Its AA rating dates back to May 2017. Share performance is a different matter. IBM stock is off more than 13% since May 1, 2017, vs. a gain of almost 62% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The Street has become incrementally more optimistic on the stock over the past 12 months, but analysts' consensus recommendation has remained stuck at Hold the entire time. Currently three analysts rate IBM at Strong Buy, one says Buy, 11 call it a Hold and one says Sell.

Their average target price of $138.89 gives the stock virtually no implied upside over the next year.

"One quarter does not make a trend but Q1 was a good start, as transactional deal activity started to firm and alleviate pressure in hardest hit areas (e.g., Services)," writes CFRA Analyst David Holt, who rates IBM at Hold. "However, we still view the shares as a 'show-me story.'"

When it comes to matters of ESG, the picture is decidedly brighter, however. Only 19% of the 140 companies in the software & services industry score an AA rating, per MSCI. A paltry 3% earn the top grade of AAA.

IBM stands out as a leader on privacy and data security, and opportunities in clean tech, MSCI says. Offsetting that somewhat are industry laggard marks for corporate behavior and human capital development.

• Market value: $209.1 billion
• Dividend yield: N/A
• MSCI ESG rating: AA

Salesforce.com (CRM, $227.96), which also was added to the Dow last year, gets an AA ESG rating from MSCI, thanks to high marks for human capital development and privacy and data security.

However, industry laggard status for issues of corporate governance have weighed on CRM's score in the past. As recently as October 2019, Salesforce was among the market's top ESG stocks, sitting on a perfect AAA rating from MSCI. But it was downgraded to AA in November of last year.

The current ESG designation is still pretty darn good, however. It puts CRM on par with IBM as an industry leader in the software & services industry. Just average marks on corporate behavior, carbon emissions and opportunities in clean tech also militate against CRM notching an even higher score.

As for what the Street thinks of the stock, CRM enjoys a high-conviction Buy recommendation from analysts. Indeed, by S&P Global Market Intelligence's ratings system, shares sit on the cusp of a Strong Buy recommendation.

Of the 44 analysts covering Salesforce tracked by S&P, 26 call it a Strong Buy, nine have it at Buy and eight call it a Hold. One analyst has no opinion on shares. With an expected average annual EPS growth rate of more than 25% over the next three to five years, it's easy to see why most of the Street is so bullish on the name.

The company's $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack Technologies, announced at the end of 2020, also bolsters the bull case, analysts say.

"If Salesforce wants to expand beyond its core gold mine of sales and marketing departments and further into the enterprise ... [the deal] represents a major shot across the bow against Microsoft," writes Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, who rates the stock at Outperform (equivalent of Buy).

Ives adds that an ongoing corporate digital transformation puts CRM in prime position to benefit over the coming years "given its end-to-end cloud product suite."

• Market value: $114.9 billion
• Dividend yield: 3.0%
• MSCI ESG rating: AAA

3M (MMM, $198.30) is the first of only two Dow stocks to receive a perfect MSCI ESG rating of AAA.

Unfortunately, the Street thinks considerably less of the stock.

MMM gets a firm consensus recommendation of Hold from the 19 analysts covering the stock tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Two of them call the stock a Strong Buy, and two more say Buy, but two say Sell and one rates it at Strong Sell. The largest concentration of opinions is right in the middle, however, with 12 pros saying 3M is a Hold.

Valuation plays a part in the Street's tepid consensus view. Analysts expect average annual EPS growth of only 6.8% over the next three to five years, and yet MMM trades at more than 20 times this year's estimated earnings.

Somewhat ironically, ESG issues contribute to at least one analysts' dim view of the stock. 3M has pledged to invest $1 billion toward achieving new water and climate goals. Shareholders are also voting on whether to transition the firm's corporate structure to one of a public benefit corporation.

The uncertainty over ESG matters – as well as regulatory risks over polyfluoroalkyl substances and litigation risks related to lawsuits over allegedly defective 3M earplugs – have forced some analysts to back off the name.

"While an economic recovery and large valuation discount present interesting tactical and short-term opportunities, we believe these potential sources of upside are outweighed by ongoing and potential litigation and ESG risks over the next 12 months," writes UBS Global Research analyst Markus Mittermaier, who rates MMM at Sell.

As far as its position among the market's best ESG stocks goes, only 8% of the companies in the industrial conglomerates industry can boast of having 3M's AAA rating. Furthermore, 3M has held the coveted top rating for five consecutive years.

The company stands out for its industry leadership on issues of corporate governance, toxic emissions and waste, and opportunities in clean tech. Corporate behavior and labor management practices are average for its industry. MSCI says 3M doesn't lag industry peers on any key ESG issues.

• Market value: $1.9 trillion
• Dividend yield: 0.9%
• MSCI ESG rating: AAA

Microsoft (MSFT, $258.26) is the only Dow stock to get top marks on ESG matters and a consensus recommendation of Strong Buy from Wall Street analysts.

The software and cloud computing behemoth has had a perfect MSCI ESG rating of AAA since May 2017. Only 3% of the 140 companies in the software & services industry can claim such lofty leadership status, per MSCI.

MSFT stands out among the best ESG stocks for its handling of corporate governance, privacy and data security, and opportunities in clean tech. The firm gets industry average marks when it comes to issues of human capital development and carbon emissions.

There is, however, a blotch on Microsoft's record. It lags industry peers on ratings for corporate behavior.

Still, analysts' ardor for MSFT stock is almost unblemished.

"Microsoft has refocused the company around Azure and Office 365, which we view as several large, multi-year secular growth engines that should help drive mid-to-high single-digit Productivity and Business Process growth and low double-digit Intelligent Cloud growth in coming years," writes Stifel analyst Brad Reback, who rates the stock at Buy.

Reback adds that strong commercial cloud revenue, gross margin growth and expense discipline "should lead to accelerating operating profit and free cash flow generation in coming quarters."

Twenty-five analysts surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence rate MSFT stock at Strong Buy. Eight analysts call it a Buy and three have it at Hold. They expect the company to generate average annual EPS growth of 14.1% over the next three to five years.

Warren Buffett was busy in the last three months of 2020.

OK, maybe not Redditor-trading-GameStop busy. But by the time the tape settled at the end of Q4, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) had shuffled positions in 21 different companies.

Not only did Buffett buy new stakes in two of the most recognizable stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but he also ditched a couple of other big-name blue chips and continued to bail on bank stocks.

We know what the greatest long-term investor of all time has been up to because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires all investment managers with more than $100 million in assets to file a Form 13F quarterly to disclose any changes in share ownership. These filings add an important level of transparency to the stock market and give Buffett-ologists a chance to get a bead on what he's thinking.

When Buffett starts a new stake in some company, or adds to an existing one, investors read into that as a vote of confidence. But if he pares his holdings in a stock, it can spark investors to rethink their own investments.

Here's the scorecard for what Warren Buffett was buying and selling during the fourth quarter of 2020, based on the 13F the company filed on Feb. 16, 2021, for the period ended Dec. 31, 2020. You can check out the entire list of Buffett stocks here, or continue reading here if you're most interested in Buffett's recent transactions.

And remember: Not all "Warren Buffett stocks" are actually his picks. Some smaller positions are believed to be handled by lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

Current price and holdings data is as of Feb. 16. Sources: Berkshire Hathaway's SEC Form 13F filed Feb. 16, 2021, for the reporting period ended Dec. 31, 2020; and WhaleWisdom.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 131,137,998 (-0.6% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $6.1 million

U.S. Bancorp (USB, $44.28) is the nation's fifth-largest bank by assets and America's biggest regional bank. It's also one of the oldest Buffett stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio; the Oracle of Omaha initiated his position in the first quarter of 2006.

Buffett is notoriously tight-lipped about U.S. Bancorp, and rarely touches the position. He clipped the position by 0.6%, or a mere 823,834 shares, in Q4 2020. That follows a 0.2% trimming in Q2 2020.

Scraping just a bit off the USB stake stands in stark contrast to what Buffett has done with so many of Berkshire's other bank stocks. And it's not like USB has been such a great stock over the years. The regional lender's annualized total return lags the broader market by wide margins over the past one-, three-, five-, 10- and 15-year periods. And it lags the bank sector over the past one-, three- and five-year periods.

Still, USB shareholders no doubt appreciate Berkshire's vote of confidence. The holding company's 8.7% stake makes it the largest institutional shareholder, ahead of Vanguard (7.3%) and BlackRock (6.5%).

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 887,135,554 (-6% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $117.71 billion

Warren Buffett has said that he doesn't think of Apple (AAPL, $133.19) as a stock. Rather, Buffett thinks of it as Berkshire's third business – and considering the size of the stake, those are hardly empty words.

But even the Oracle of Omaha has to keep a star investment like Apple in check.

Buffett cut his Apple stake by 6% in Q4, possibly because it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. After all, shares in the iPhone maker rose 15% in the fourth quarter of 2020. Even after shedding 57.2 million shares, Apple still accounts for almost 44% of Berkshire's total portfolio value.

Warren Buffett took his first bite in early 2016, and the iPhone maker has since become Berkshire Hathaway's single-largest holding.

Also, at roughly 887 million shares, BRK.B remains Apple's third-largest investor. The holding company still owns 5.1% of all AAPL shares outstanding. Only Vanguard and BlackRock – giants of the passively managed index fund universe – hold more Apple stock.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 72,500,000 (-9% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $3.02 billion

Warren Buffett first took a stake in General Motors (GM, $53.46), the world's fourth-largest auto manufacturer by production, in early 2012. And over the past few years, he became even more bullish, upping Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in 2018, 2019 and as recently as Q3 2020.

But now Buffett appears to be tapping the brakes. Berkshire cut its holdings in the car company by 9%, or 7.5 million shares, over the last three months of 2020.

General Motors has always looked like a classic Buffett value bet. After all, there are fewer American brands more iconic than GM. He also has sung the praises of CEO Mary Barra on several occasions. And the stock perennially trades at crazy cheap multiples of expected earnings.

But GM, which had a miserable first half of 2020 that included suspending its dividend in April, rallied a remarkable 41% in Q4. Maybe Buffett just decided it was time to take a little profit.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 1,284,020 (-10% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $14.2 million

Liberty Latin America Class A (LILA, $11.93) and Liberty Latin America Class C (LILAK, $11.62) shares are the smallest of Berkshire Hathaway's de facto bets on legendary pay-TV mogul John Malon.

Liberty Latin America provides cable, broadband, telephone and wireless services in Chile, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and other parts of Latin America. Liberty Global, the multinational telecommunications company in which Berkshire also holds a stake, issued tracking stock of its Latin American operations in 2015, then spun off those operations entirely in 2018.

Most recently, in November 2020, Liberty Latin America closed on its nearly $2 billion purchase of AT&T's (T) wireless and wireline assets in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

While Buffett clearly finds some appeal in the expertise of Malone, a pioneer in the telecom industry, it's clear that he's not 100% comfortable with his position in Liberty Latin America, which he has tinkered with for a few quarters now.

During the third quarter, Berkshire added roughly 4% (66,567 shares) to its Class C stake, but trimmed its Class A position by about 5% (160,478 shares). However, in the fourth quarter, Buffett reversed course on the Class C shares, reducing his position by 146,177 shares, or 10%.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 13,849,207 (-27% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $232.4 million

Warren Buffett also pulled something of a 180-degree turn on Suncor Energy (SU, $18.79), cutting deeply into his stake just a couple quarters after making a sizable addition.

Suncor – an integrated energy giant whose operations span oil sands developments, offshore oil production, biofuels and even wind energy – was the only energy stock in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio for a couple quarters in 2020. However, Buffett added a big, blue-chip sector play during the fourth quarter (as we'll see below). That appeared to come at some cost to Suncor, which saw its stake reduced by 27%, or 5.4 million shares, in Q4.

Buffett has been somewhat fickle when it comes to the Canadian oil sands miner. When he entered SU during the fourth quarter of 2018, that marked the second time Berkshire Hathaway had taken a stab at Suncor.

Berkshire originally invested in the energy giant in 2013, then sold the entirety of the position three years later.

• Action: Reduced stake
• Shares held: 52,423,867 (-58% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $1.58 billion

Wells Fargo (WFC, $34.79), which has been in the Berkshire portfolio since 2001, was once a Warren Buffett favorite.

Now, it's in the doghouse.

The scandal-plagued mega-bank has been reeling for years in the wake of revelations that it opened millions of phony accounts, modified mortgages without authorization and charged customers for auto insurance they did not need. The business has been slow to recover, as has the stock.

Buffett has sold off Wells Fargo shares in numerous quarters since the start of 2018. It started out as what seemed to be routine paring to keep the position below a regulatory 10% maximum ownership threshold for banks.

However, Buffett dumped more than 55 million shares, or nearly 15% of his position, at the end of last year. In Q2, he jettisoned 85.6 million shares, or more than a quarter of the remaining stake. In the third quarter, he cut his position by another 46%, and Q4 saw the remainder bleed out another 58%.

Berkshire Hathaway is no longer a top-10 WFC shareholder, but its 1.3% stake in the company keeps it within the top 10.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Whatever affinity Warren Buffett had for JPMorgan Chase (JPM, $117.30) is clearly gone … and so is his stake in the nation's largest bank by assets.

Berkshire Hathaway established its position in JPM during the third quarter of 2018, then improved upon it several times thereafter. But all of that has been reversed over the past three quarters. Take a look:

• Q1 2020: Cut 1.8 million shares (3%)
• Q2 2020: Dropped 35.5 million shares (61%)
• Q3 2020: Sold off 21.2 million shares (95%)
• Q4 2020: Dumped roughly 967,000 shares to exit the stake.

That's an incredible reversal of stance for Berkshire, which was the sixth-largest shareholder in JPM as of the first quarter's end.

Part of the original attraction for JPMorgan was because of Warren Buffett's professed admiration for CEO Jamie Dimon. The two partnered with Jeff Bezos, chairman and CEO of Amazon.com (AMZN), to form a healthcare initiative intended to improve coverage and lower costs.

Coincidentally enough, that connection to Dimon has ended recently, too; their "Haven" healthcare partnership called it quits at the start of 2021.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Easy come, easy go.

Warren Buffett went gaga over blue-chip pharma stocks during the second half of 2020. During Q3, he added positions in four Big Pharma names, and he added to three of those stakes during 2020's final quarter.

Unfortunately, Pfizer (PFE, $37.33) was the odd man out.

Pfizer is best-known for blockbuster drugs such as Lipitor (for cholesterol) and Viagra (for erectile dysfunction) that long ago lost their patent protections, but it has a stocked pipeline. Investments in research and development, along with acquisitions, have resulted in several hit drugs on the market, including Ibrance, to treat breast cancer; blood thinner Eliquis; and Xeljanz, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

Also, Pfizer, along with partner BioNTech (BNTX), led the way in getting a COVID-19 vaccine approved.

Despite Pfizer's pharmaceutical successes, as well as its healthy dividend stream, Buffett treated PFE like a short-term swing trade. But unless Buffett perfectly timed the top during the fourth quarter, it's unlikely he made out with gonzo profits. Buffett bought in during Q3 at an average price of $34.82 per share; the stock briefly eclipsed $43 in December before receding back into the $30s.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

Buffett had long been comfortable with investing in the banking business. At the 1995 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, he said the industry "falls within our circle of competence to evaluate."

But 2020's pain in the financial sector finally forced the Oracle to make some wholesale changes.

It's fair to say that Buffett went on a full-blown bank purge in 2020. In addition to dumping JPMorgan, he also sold off his remaining 1.9 million shares in PNC Financial Services (PNC, $126.29).

That cemented quite a reversal of fortune for PNC, which looked like it was gaining favor in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.

Warren Buffett began investing in PNC, the nation's sixth-largest bank by assets and second-largest regional lender, during the third quarter of 2018. Buffett upped Berkshire Hathaway's stake by another 4% in Q1 2019. And he added another 6%, or 526,930 shares, to start 2020.

But oh, how times changed. My, how times change. Buffett lopped off 3.9 million shares, or about 41%, from his PNC position in Q2, then further reduced it by almost two-thirds in Q3. By the end of 2020, Warren Buffett had severed all connections with the super-regional bank.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

​M&T Bank (MTB, $126.92) was the third of the three bank stocks that Warren Buffett exited altogether during the fourth quarter, and it's perhaps the most surprising dismissal.

MTB is a regional bank that operates more than 700 branches in eight states, including New York, Maryland and New Jersey, as well as Washington, D.C. It had been profitable year in, year out, for decades, it was a reliable dividend payer, and it had been a member in good standing of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio since 2001.

Buffett himself was a fan of M&T Bank's late CEO. In 2011, the Oracle recommended that Berkshire Hathaway shareholders read M&T's annual reports, which were written by Robert Wilmers, chairman and CEO from 1983 until his death in 2017.

"Bob is a very smart guy and he has a lot of good observations," Buffett said.

These qualities endeared Warren Buffett to the bank for a very long time. After all, Buffett has a soft spot for well-run, unassuming businesses. And he frequently cites the importance of management talent when it comes to deciding where to invest.

Nonetheless, MTB was merely an OK performer for Warren Buffett since he established the position two decades ago, and 2020's performance knocked it well off course. His affection for M&T, like other bank stocks, waned as the year progressed. Buffett cut his position by 15% during the second quarter, and he hacked away another 35% during Q3. That's nearly 2.5 million shares in two quarters.

The final blow came in Q4 2020, when Berkshire disposed of its remaining 2.9 million shares.

• Action: Exited stake
• Shares held: 0
• Value of stake: $0

No one will ever accuse Warren Buffett of being a gold bug. Especially after his quick flirtation with Barrick Gold (GOLD, $25.86).

"It doesn't do anything but sit there and look at you," Buffett has been known to say about the yellow metal. But holding gold as an asset class isn't exactly the same as investing in a gold miner such as Barrick.

True, mining stocks are sensitive to the price of whatever commodity they are digging out of the ground. But at least they produce something, as in cash flow. In the case of Barrick, it even pays a small dividend.

Besides, Barrick has more going for it than gold. It also mines copper, which is used in just about everything. As such, it's a bet on a return to global growth.

It wasn't that much of a stretch, then, when Buffett picked up 20.9 million shares in Barrick during the second quarter of 2020.

But it's clear that Buffett had GOLD shares on a short leash. Berkshire curbed BRK.B's holding by more than 40% just one quarter after it initiated its stake. And in 2020's final quarter, Buffett let the remaining 12 million-share position loose.

Like with Pfizer, it's possible that Buffett made a decent short-term profit depending on when exactly he sold in Q4. But that still marks an uncharacteristically short turnaround for the famed buy-and-holder.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 1,732,548 (+1% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $775.4 million

Warren Buffett has found a winner in RH (RH, $487.31), which many readers know as Restoration Hardware.

While brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled mightily over the past few years thanks in part to the rise of e-commerce, RH has found success catering to the upper crust. It also found success catering to the work-from-home movement, as Americans decided to upgrade their home offices … and their homes in general.

"With several market (high-end home growth) and company specific growth opportunities (new galleries, RH Ecosystem, int'l), we see a strong case for high (long-term) sales growth and multiple expansion," write BofA Global Research analysts, who rate the stock a Buy and call it "one of the best long-term growth stories in our coverage."

This is a young holding that started during the third quarter of 2019, but it's one that fits broadly with Buffett's worldview. Buffett stocks tend to be bets on America's growth, which is exactly what a bet on housing and housing-related industries is.

Berkshire put a little more money into its RH bet during the fourth quarter, upping the stake by 24,200 shares, or about 1%.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 33,336,016 (+11% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $2.07 billion

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY, $59.40) was one of Warren Buffett's third-quarter Big Pharma bets, in which he took on almost 30 million shares worth $1.81 billion.

And he wasn't done buying. Buffett hiked the stock by another 3.4 million shares in Q4, or about 11%.

BMY beefed up in a big way a year ago when it acquired pharmaceutical giant Celgene, and that has to be a big part of the attraction to this stock. The deal brought in a pair of blockbuster multiple myeloma treatments: Pomalyst and Revlimid, the latter of which also treats mantle cell lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndromes.

That's kind of par for Bristol-Myers' course. A long track record of successful acquisitions has kept the pharma company's pipeline primed with big-name drugs over the years. Among the better-known names today are Coumadin, a blood thinner, and Glucophage, for type 2 diabetes.

Better still, this looks like a classic Buffett value.

"We continue to believe Bristol Myers shares are undervalued, and with Opdivo returning to growth following recent clinical success and several new therapies recently launched or expected to launch over the next year, we reiterate our Outperform rating," write William Blair analysts.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 25,533,082 (+20% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $2.74 billion

AbbVie (ABBV, $104.20) is best known for blockbuster drugs such as Humira and Imbruvica, but analysts are also optimistic about the potential for Rinvoq and Skyrizi, which treat rheumatoid arthritis and plaque psoriasis.

Indeed, recently released Q4 results were a pleasant shock for UBS analysts, who said, "We are surprised to the upside by the magnitude of beats for key growth drivers Skyrizi and Rinvoq."

But another likely draw for Warren Buffett is the biopharma firm's storied dividend history.

AbbVie is a Dividend Aristocrat, by virtue of having raised its dividend every year for nearly half a century. Even better, its current 5.0% dividend yield is one of the highest in the S&P 500, at several times better than the index average of about 1.5%. Moreover, the company has improved its payouts at a rapid 18% over the past five years.

Buffett first bought shares in Q3 2020 when he initiated a $1.86 billion stake of more than 21 million shares. He added to the position with another 4.3 million shares in the final quarter of 2020.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 28,697,435 (+28% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $2.35 billion

Warren Buffett bought another 6,294,333 shares in Dow component Merck (MRK, $80.18) in Q4, an investment initiated in the third quarter of last year. The pharma giant now accounts for almost 0.9% of BRK.B's equity holdings.

Central to Merck's fundamental performance is Keytruda, a blockbuster cancer drug approved for more than 20 indications. Additionally, MRK has a favorable patent setup with no key brands losing marketing exclusivity until 2022. Keytruda is on patent until 2028.

"While revenues missed for Q4, investors likely will/should care more about key growth drivers Keytruda, Gardasil and Lynparza, which all beat," write UBS analysts, who rate the stock a Buy despite a change in leadership. CEO Ken Frazier will retire at the end of June, with CFO Rob Davis to take over.

As for Merck's dividend, it's reliable and growing. The payout had been rising by a penny per share for years, but now it's starting to heat up. MRK upgraded its payouts by 14.6% in 2019, then followed that up with a nearly 11% improvement for 2020.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 33,534,017 (+34% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $1.07 billion

In a sign of conviction, Berkshire increased its position in Kroger (KR, $33.66) by 34% in the fourth quarter.

Berkshire Hathaway's initial stake in supermarket titan Kroger, entered in Q4 2019, was a little bit of a head-scratcher. Many long-term investors have soured on traditional supermarket chains in a world where Walmart (WMT), Amazon.com and other large firms are vying to rule the grocery space.

But KR isn't taking the fight lying down. Believe it or not, it's one of the largest retailers in the world. Kroger has roughly 2,750 retail food stores operating under such banners as Dillons, Ralph's, Harris Teeter and its namesake brand, as well as 1,585 gas stations and even 170 jewelry stores under banners including Fred Meyer Jewelers and Littman Jewelers.

Kroger also is an excellent dividend growth stock, upping the ante in June by 12.5% to 72 cents per share quarterly. That's roughly in line with its five-year dividend growth rate of 12%.

Following the Q4 binge, Berkshire is now the fourth-largest KR shareholder at a 4.4% stake.

• Action: Added to stake
• Shares held: 5,242,000 (+117% from Q3)
• Value of stake: $707.9 million

Berkshire Hathaway more than doubled its stake in wireless communications company T-Mobile US (TMUS, $122.00) in Q4.

BRK.B first bought shares in telco in the third quarter of 2019. In the most recent period, Buffett grabbed another 2,828,844 shares, a 117% increase from the previous quarter.

T-Mobile is certainly a much more attractive investment since it closed its $26 billion merger with Sprint in April 2020. The deal created a real No. 3 wireless company whose total subscribers are at least within the same ballpark as Verizon and AT&T.

"We continue to believe that T-Mobile is the best multiyear FCF growth story in wireless with a number of levers for value creation, including subscriber growth in the core TMUS operations … (and) reducing churn in the legacy Sprint customer base," among other drivers, say Deutsche Bank analysts (Buy).

It's hardly a large position, at just 0.26% of Berkshire Hathaway's total portfolio value. But clearly Buffett and his lieutenants have warmed up to this telecom stock.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 23,076,923
• Value of stake: $364.4 million

Berkshire Hathaway in September 2020 backed a $2.65 billion deal by TV station-owner E.W. Scripps' (SSP, $17.57) to purchase broadcaster ION Media.

In return for helping finance the acquisition, Berkshire made a $600 million preferred equity investment in Scripps and received a warrant to buy up to 23.1 million shares of the communications company.

Berkshire's investment, which gives it a 33% ownership stake in Scripps, accounts for a mere 0.14% of the total value of its equity portfolio.

Don't bother trying to copycat Buffett on this one. It's another case of him getting terms unavailable to mere mortals.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 4,267,825
• Value of stake: $499.3 million

Berkshire Hathaway's core operations are mostly to be found in the insurance industry, but they've never been a major factor in its equity portfolio. Indeed, the company dumped what was left in its stake of Travelers (TRV) in early 2020.

So it's something of a surprise that BRK.B initiated a position in Marsh & McLennan (MMC, $114.50) in the fourth quarter. Buffett picked up 4.2 million shares valued at not quite half a billion dollars.

The position accounts for a minuscule 0.2% of the total value of Berkshire's stock holdings. And it gives Berkshire control of only 0.8% of the insurance company's shares outstanding.

Shares in MMC, which provides various risk, strategy and consulting services, are long-time market laggards. Perhaps Buffett sees untapped value. The company also pays a modest dividend yielding 1.6% at present.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 48,498,965
• Value of stake: $4.1 billion

Chevron (CVX, $93.13), the only energy stock left in the Dow Jones Industrial Average after Exxon Mobil (XOM) was removed in 2020, is another blue-chip dividend payer that's right in Warren Buffett's wheelhouse.

Berkshire Hathaway initiated a position of more than 48 million shares in the fourth quarter valued at $4.1 billion. Although energy prices aren't expected to make huge moves in the year ahead, the outlook for oil and gas is much improved and should only get better as the global economy recovers from the depths of the pandemic.

Indeed, CVX was able to take advantage of the worst of the industry's woes in July 2020 by acquiring Noble Energy in a $5 billion all-stock transaction. The company's scale, asset quality and reserves make it one of the healthiest players in an industry where a lot of players are on injured reserve.

And then there's the dividend, which is both generous in today's low-yield world and about as steady as they come. A slew of oil and gas companies were forced to slash or suspend their dividends last year, but not Chevron. Indeed, it has raised the payout for 33 straight years, and management says it will protect the dividend at all costs.

With 2.5% of CVX's shares outstanding, Berkshire becomes the energy giant's fifth-largest shareholder.

• Action: New stake
• Shares held: 146,716,496
• Value of stake: $8.6 billion

Verizon (VZ, $54.15), the only telecommunications company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is a beloved staple of long-term dividend investors everywhere. That's why it looks so at home in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio.

Berkshire and Buffett initiated a brand-new stake in VZ in Q4, picking up almost 146.7 million shares valued at $8.69 billion. In one fell swoop, the telco accounts for a sizable 3.2% of Berkshire's total equity portfolio value.

The move also makes Buffett the fourth-largest Verizon shareholder. It's 3.5% ownership stake leaves it behind only Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors.

Bulls like Verizon for both its growth prospects in the era of 5G networking, its defensive characteristics and the reliable income stream it delivers to investors.

"With a safe dividend yield and low leverage, we believe the market favors Verizon's 5G strategy and simpler story," say Raymond James equity research analysts. "Whether we are in an expansion or a contraction, consumers' internet and mobile plans may be the last thing they're willing to give up when times get tough."