2009-05-21

Warren Buffett was talking his portfolio up in early May

I wrote a post in early May about Warren Buffett's comment titled "Yet more hypocrisy coming from Warren Buffett" because he was talking up Wells Fargo, and it appears he had indeed increase massively his stake in the company, before making public comments about how much he would love to buy the whole bank.

While this is nothing illegal, and maybe not even wrong, I am still a bit disturbed because I don't remember him disclosing the massive increase in his Wells Fargo allocation which I consider it being wrong morality.
(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. added to holdings of lenders Wells Fargo & Co and U.S. Bancorp in the first quarter as the shares traded at their lowest prices in more than a decade.

Buffett’s firm, the largest shareholder in San Francisco- based Wells Fargo, increased its stake in the bank by about 4.3 percent in the first quarter to 302.6 million shares, Berkshire said in a regulatory filing yesterday disclosing its U.S. stock portfolio as of March 31. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire increased its holding of U.S. Bancorp by about 2.2 percent.
[...]
Buffett is “putting his money where his mouth is,” said Gerald Martin, a finance professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington who has studied Berkshire’s investing history. “I don’t think he’s ever been this transparent about what he’s doing.”
[Comment: maybe because this "transparency" serves him at the moment?]

Investors can’t always be certain they have full information on Berkshire’s stock holdings because Buffett often receives U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission permission to delay disclosure to avoid copycat investing. Yesterday’s filing only lists equities traded on U.S. exchanges, valued at $40.9 billion as of March 31.
[Comment: This is truly amazing, I wasn't aware of that. Why does Berkshire, among all the companies in the world who have to follow the law and disclose their holdings, get special treatment?]
Here are the previous posts regarding Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway:

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