I discuss the latest superinvestor stocks as of Q1 2024, including why Berkshire sold 13% of their Apple holdings.
While the late Charlie Munger was no longer the Chairman of Daily Journal at the time of his passing in November 2023, sites like Dataroma still attribute the 13F filing of DJCO to one of the best investors of all time. You would have hoped DJCO would hold onto Charlie’s stocks forever?
However, unlike in Q4 2023, Daily Journal doesn’t seem to be honoring Charlie’s longtime stock picks because they’ve reduced all their 4 holdings: 3 bank stocks and Alibaba. Lets hope they are better allocating the money then.
By studying what superinvestors are investing in or not, their trends might give us new insights, investing ideas, and help us to become better investors.
It is somewhat shocking to me that Berkshire Hathaway would sell 13% of their AAPL to capture some gains at more favorable tax rates rather than say, take some gains off of AMEX or Coke. Why sell some of the “best company” (aka Apple) in the world when you could reduce any other stock?
Who will be more right on Apple’s valuation, Tim Cook or Warren Buffett? Because while Berkshire is/was reducing, Apple has been buying back their stock to the tune of $110 billion that was announced during the May 2024 earnings call.
Meanwhile, Berkshire would rather have around $200 billion in cash and equivalent (US treasury bonds) as of June 2024. Is Buffett waiting for a stock market buying opportunity or waiting to buy whole companies? Time will tell who is making the better capital allocation decision currently.
Moving quickly on, the American equity portfolios of Li Lu and Guy Spier appear to be dormant except for Spier reducing some of his Ferrari holding.
Interestingly, Mohnish Pabrai has been reducing in some of his stateside resource, commodity, and energy companies. Not sure if this is legit or not, but apparently Pabrai has come out with a Wagons mutual fund that people can learn about. This Wagons fund (WAGNX) gives us another learning opportunity if we’re trying to emulate (don’t blindly copy!) how Mohnish Pabrai invests.
Michael Burry keeps adding to his positions in BABA and JD.com, both Chinese eCommerce tech stocks, but I wouldn’t read too much into these top two holdings in the Scion Asset Management portfolio. Burry sold entirely out of Google/Alphabet and Amazon, which surprises me.
Finally, Greg Alexander of Conifer Management/Sequoia has been significantly invested in automotive stocks, including Lithia Motors, but has reduced his stake in Stellantis by half. It’s good to keep tabs on Greg Alexander because Warren Buffett respects this investor a lot!
By studying what some of the best investors are investing in or divesting out of, we can hopefully find potentially good investment ideas too. Or just get some cautionary tales and vicarious learnings out of the big investors.
If you’re interested in learning how to take control of your finances and start becoming an investor like Warren Buffett, check out my free PDF guide.
I look forward to making more investor friends! Add me on Instagram: michellemarki