(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can subscribe here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)
Even more records as Berkshire’s fourth-quarter rally sees 19% gain
Red-hot Berkshire Hathaway shares are capping off a strong week with four new record closes in a row.
Since the rally began with the start of the fourth quarter on October 1, the Class A shares closed at record highs 11 times as they soared 19.1%.
The most widespread B shares closed at new highs only 10 times, but are also up 19.1% from their short-term low.
Berkshire’s B shares are now 7.5 percentage points ahead of the benchmark for the year so far.
Financial Data Filing Points to Increase in Bank of America Sales
Berkshire Hathaway is expected to disclose its quarterly overview of its stock portfolio on Monday when it files its Q3 13F report with the SEC.
We won’t know for sure until then, but the company’s third-quarter 10-Q numbers, released last Saturday, indicate that Berkshire has continued to scale back its operations. Bank of America bet.
This would be the ninth consecutive quarter of sales.
As of June 30, Berkshire reported holding 483.4 million BAC shares now valued at $24.7 billion, its fifth-largest stock position.
As of June 30, 2024, before the sale began, Berkshire held just over 1 billion shares valued at $41.1 billion.
Since then, the number of shares in the portfolio has declined by 53.2%, excluding sales in the third quarter, while the stock price has increased by 28.3%.
If there had been no cuts, the position would have reached $52.7 billion.
The belief that Berkshire sold more BAC stock in the third quarter is based on a $372 million reduction in the cost basis of stocks the company classifies as “banking, insurance and financial.”
The 10-Q also reports $2.2 billion in pretax gains from stock sales.
Barron’s Bank of America rating and American Express are the only financial stocks in the portfolio that have a sufficiently low cost basis to generate such a gain. Amex is one of four stocks that new CEO Greg Abel indicated he would hold for “decades” in his February letter to shareholders.
Regardless, Berkshire’s nearly 23% stake in Amex would have necessitated prompt disclosure of any sale.
FILE PHOTO: Reflections are seen in the windows of a Bank of America branch in New York.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
Based on the 10-Q figures, the warrants Berkshire received as part of a $5 billion investment in the bank in 2011 that it used in 2017 to buy 700 million shares at $7.14 each, and the average price of BAC shares during the quarter, Barron’s it is estimated that 30 to 40 million shares may have been sold.
That would roughly match the 30.2 million shares sold in the second quarter.
The deal isn’t as good, but Barron’s thinks Berkshire may have purchased more Alphabet shares during the period. That’s based on a $2.3 billion increase in cost base for the category that includes Google’s parent company.
Overall, it looks like it will be a relatively quiet quarter with $2.4 billion in stock purchases and $2.8 billion in sales.
In the first quarter, Berkshire bought $15.9 billion and sold $24.1 billion of shares. In the second quarter, it bought $23.5 billion and sold $3.7 billion.
All these figures exclude the company’s repurchases of its own shares.
Second yen bond sale of year offers more attractive rates
In a term sheet filed Friday morning, Berkshire Hathaway says it is selling more than 182 billion yen ($1.1 billion) worth of bonds with maturities between 2029 and 2056 and annual interest rates between 2.6% and 4.6%.
Bloomberg points out that the prices, compared to references, are higher than during its previous sale this year.
He quotes a fund manager as saying that market sentiment “has become more sensitive”, forcing issuers to make their offerings more attractive.
In April, Berkshire sold 272 billion yen ($1.7 billion) worth of bonds.
Berkshire uses proceeds from yen-denominated bonds to protect its ongoing investments in Japanese stocks from currency fluctuations.
BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET
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HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC’S BUFFETT ARCHIVES
Buffett lists Ben Graham’s three essential investment principles (1996)
WARREN BUFFETT: Regarding investment books, if you are asking about it, I would recommend the first two books that Phil Fisher wrote around 1960, “Common Sense (Stocks) and Uncommon Profits”.“ and the second (“Paths to wealth through ordinary stocks”). These are very good books.
You know, I obviously recommend, first of all, “The Intelligent Investor” by (Benjamin Graham), chapters eight and 20 of which are the ones you should really read.
Two of the… well, all the important ideas in investing, really, are in this book, because there are only about three ideas. And these – two of them are highlighted in these two chapters…
The first is that – think about yourself – think about investing like owning a business and not buying something that fluctuates in price.
And the second is your attitude, which is related to this, the attitude toward the market, which is covered in chapter eight. And if you have the right attitude towards market movements, it will be of great help to you when it comes to securities.
And the last chapter is about margin of safety, which means don’t try to drive a 9,800 pound truck over a bridge that says, you know, “Capacity: 10,000 pounds.” But wander the road a bit and find one that says, “Capacity: 15,000 pounds.”
BERKSHIRE STOCKS WATCH
BRK.A stock price: $889,793.83
BRK.B stock price: $592.94
BRK.BP/E (TTM): 16.55
Market capitalization of Berkshire: $1,259,897,054,755
Berkshire Cash as of September 30: $377.4 billion (up 3.3% from June 30)
Excluding rail cash and subtraction of Treasury bills payable: $352.3 billion (down 1.9% from June 30)
Berkshire repurchased $9.6 billion worth of its shares in the third quarter of 2026.
MAIN BERKSHIRE PARTICIPATIONS – November 13, 2026
Top holdings of Berkshire publicly traded stocks in the United States and Japan, by market value, based on latest closing prices.
Holdings are as of June 30, 2026, as shown in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing dated August 14, 2026, except:
The complete list of holdings and current market values is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please send me any questions or comments about the newsletter at alex.crippen@cnbc.com. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
If you are not already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.
Additionally, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. They are collected here on the Berkshire website.
— Alex Crippen, editor-in-chief, Warren Buffett Watch
Gn bussni
