warren buffett portfolio
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- Last Updated: Thursday, 09 April 2020 04:39
- Published: Wednesday, 08 April 2020 14:48
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Warren Buffett is among the richest people on earth, and has amassed all of his wealth via stocks. So, it's helpful to analyze what stocks he buys or sells. This information is publicly available.
Warren buffett is the chairman and CEO of the company "Berkshire Hathaway" t(aka BH) hat he founded. Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company that he bought in 1960's. It was a money losing company, but Buffett started adding other businesses to Berkshire Hathaway. He started buying shares of other companies, as well as buying whole companies. Thus over years, it has become holding conglomerate company, which has lots of wholly owned companies as GEICO, BSNF Railway, etc, as well as having partial equity stake in other companies as Apple, Wells Fargo, etc (by buying stocks of these companies).
Berkshire Hathaway's market cap is about $500B as of Dec, 2019. It trades on the stock market as any other stock, and has 2 classes of stock. If we look at BH cash and equivalents, we see that BH has $200B in stocks. $100B or so in cash, and 100's of wholly owned companies which market values at about $200B based on the income they generate. Hence the $500B valuation of the company. As you can see about half of BH stock valuation is based on value of stocks that it owns. So, BH stock can also be seen as a mutual fund index, whose price goes up/down based on stock price of it's holdings. so, a lot of people prefer owning BH stock instead of holding an index fund as "S&P500", as BH stock holdings have always risen much more than S&P500 holdings. On top of that, wholly owned companies of BH also generate more cash and grow more profitably than the market as a whole, so their valuation also keeps on increasing. Also, BH keeps a lot of cash on hand, so anytime there is a severe market correction, BH invests that cash to buy stocks at lower prices. But that's assuming, BH can time the market, which is almost impossible. Anyway, the end result of al this is that BH stock has given a return of about 20% compared to S&P500 return of 10%. However, BH stock doesn't pay any dividend.
Warren buffet's wealth is around $100B of which, 99% of it is held in BH stock. The remaining 1% of his wealth is in personal portfolio of stocks, which pretty much mirrors the stock holdings in BH. This personal portfolio allows him to get dividends in tens of millions, which becomes his income for tax purpose. Since 100% of his income is from dividends, he pays a very low 15% long term tax on his income. I've no idea, why he doesn't have all of his wealth in BH stock, when he can get away with paying any tax at all. Since Buffett doesn't have high expenses due to his cheap lifestyle, he doesn't need those dividends at all.
Personal Portfolio: This link lists stocks owned in his personal portfolio:
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/88541/lessons-from-warren-buffetts-personal-portfolio
BH Portfolio: This link lists stocks owned in BH portfolio:
https://www.simplysafedividends.com/intelligent-income/posts/4-warren-buffett-s-dividend-portfolio
As of Sept, 2018: $200B of stocks were owned byBerkshire Hatahaway Portfolio. There were 45 stocks in this, of which 34 paid a dividend. $100B in cash and short term investments still remains in the portfolio which is getting invested in stocks little at a time.
1. Apple: 25.8% (=$50B)
2. Bank of America: 11.7% (=$24B)
3. Wells Fargo: 10.5% (=$22B)
4. Coco-Cola: 8.4% (=$17B)
5. Kraft Heinz KHC : 8.1% (=$16B)
6. AMEX: 7.3% (=$15B) => 70% of portfolio is comprised of just 6 stocks
7. US Bancorp : 3%
8. Goldman Sachs: 1.9%
9. Moodys: 1.9%
10. JPM: 1.8%
11. Bank of New yourk, Mellon: 1.8%
12. Delta airlines: 1.7%