What Warren Buffet Has Bought Since June 2013

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one world

As brilliant and benevolent as he is, I am no longer a huge fan of Warren Buffet's stock picking style these days.

Buffett today is so different from the young, aggressive fellow that he was back in the 1950s - 1970s.

In those days he was not interested in modest, incremental gains, as he is now. Back then, he chased logarithmic gains and, more often than not, he pulled it off. Interestingly, back then, he mostly bought lowcaps rather than megacaps.

If anyone is interested, here is a list of Buffett's latest acquisitions since June 2013. Some of these are new acquisitions, others are stocks he already owned but has added to.


DVA DaVita HealthCare
USB U.S. Bancorp
SU Suncor Energy Inc
GM General Motors Co
WFC Wells Fargo & Co
CBI Chicago Bridge & Iro...
BK Bank of New York Mellon
VRSN VeriSign, Inc.
NOV National Oilwell
DISH

PS. Don't bet the farm on any of the above. None of this is intended as investment advice.
 
The main reason for the change in strategy is the sheer size of Berkshire Hathaway, if you read his letters to shareholders you will see he describes the effects of size in some detail.

I hope i get so big that i can't buy small cap public companies too!
 
galumay said:
The main reason for the change in strategy is the sheer size of Berkshire Hathaway, if you read his letters to shareholders you will see he describes the effects of size in some detail. I hope i get so big that i can't buy small cap public companies too!
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This is your first post - welcome to the forum.

Good point Galumay. BH is indeed a whale of a company. There's even talk of including it in the Dow Jones 30 index.

Personally, I'm keener on small caps myself - even if they have a tendency to go belly-up more often than they should.
 
one world said:
As brilliant and benevolent as he is, I am no longer a huge fan of Warren Buffet's stock picking style these days.

DVA DaVita HealthCare
USB U.S. Bancorp
SU Suncor Energy Inc
GM General Motors Co
WFC Wells Fargo & Co
CBI Chicago Bridge & Iro...
BK Bank of New York Mellon
VRSN VeriSign, Inc.
NOV National Oilwell
DISH
Click to expand...

Out of the above companies any investment under $1B is probably done by one of his two portfolio managers and not by Buffett himself. Buffett nowadays only invests in big elephants (term he uses to describe big investments) that help move the needle (aka. investment returns of Berkshire).

From memory he needs to put about $20B each year to work that keeps growing year on year. That's $385 million each and every week. Even if you get to invest in ventures open only to some can you imagine having to find new opportunities to put $385m to work at above average returns each and every week??

Since 1965 the book value of Berkshire has increased over 19% compounded. Thats nearly 50years and he has hardly ever used leverage to boost his returns.

Cheers,
Oracle.
 
oracle said:
Thats nearly 50years and he has hardly ever used leverage to boost his returns. .
Click to expand...

The man is a genius.

Have you noticed he's dumped his long-standing holdings in the Washington Post? Should have done it years ago but I guess he had a sense of loyalty to Katherine Graham who was still alive back then. His best timed sale, in my opinion, was Petro China.
 
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Buffett does use leverage, but it comes from the floats held by Geico insurance and General Re. This is the money that's taken in as premiums, and will eventually be used to pay out claims. I've got a feeling that allowed Berkshire Hathaway to really juice up its returns.

As for the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos just bought that. :)
 
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