For much of the last 60 years, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett has been lapping Wall Street’s major stock indexes with ease.
The “Oracle of Omaha,” as he’s been affably dubbed by the investing community, has overseen an average annual return in his company’s Class A shares (BRK.A) that nearly doubles up the annualized total return of the benchmark S&P 500, including dividends, since the mid-1960s. More recently, he witnessed Berkshire reaching a trillion-dollar valuation, which is a mark only eight U.S.-listed companies have ever achieved.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.
Even though Warren Buffett is fallible — Berkshire took a sizable loss on its now-disposed stake in media stock Paramount Global earlier this year — his notable outperformance of the broad-market indexes has earned him quite the following from new and tenured investors alike.
But despite being a big proponent of the U.S. economy and long-term investing, Buffett’s buying activity over the last seven quarters has been exceptionally selective.
The Oracle of Omaha has been a big-time net-seller of stocks for seven consecutive quarters
Investors typically wait on the edge of their seats for Berkshire Hathaway’s quarterly Form 13F filing, which provides a detailed picture of which stocks Buffett and his most trusted investment aides, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, have been buying and selling.
However, Berkshire’s cash flow statements, which can be found in its quarterly operating results, paint the clearest picture of how he and his team feel about stocks.
Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2022 (Oct. 1, 2022) and continuing through June 30, 2024 — a span of seven quarters — Berkshire’s brightest investment minds have been net sellers of stocks:
Cumulatively, Buffett has overseen the sale of almost $132 billion more in stocks than he and his team have purchased since October 2022.
The bulk of this selling activity can be traced to the No. 1 holding in Berkshire’s 45-stock, $308 billion investment portfolio, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Buffett…
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