🐐 Warren Buffett's Stock Portfolio

Happy Friday!

On Tuesday, investment firms managing over $100M in assets were required to submit their 13F filings. These documents offer a glimpse into the firms' quarterly activities, revealing valuable insights for investors. I've visualized the portfolios of three prominent investors in this newsletter. I hope you enjoy it!

Some key data bites from this week that you should know: 

• U.S. consumer prices rose 3.2% year-over-year in October, below the expected 3.3% increase, driven by lower energy costs.

• Donald Trump's Truth Social $DWAC has reported losses of over $31M since its launch.

• U.S. wholesale prices fell 0.5% in October, the biggest drop since April 2020, while on a year-over-year basis, producer prices rose 1.3%, down from 2.2% in September.

• United Parcel Service $UPS has opened a 20-acre warehouse in Kentucky with plans to deploy over 3,000 robots to handle tasks, allowing the facility to run with about 200 workers.

In today’s newsletter:

• 🐐 Warren Buffett’s Stock Portfolio

• 🧸 Michael Burry’s Stock Portfolio

• 💻 Bill Gates’ Stock Portfolio

Let’s dive right in!

🐐 Warren Buffett’s Stock Portfolio

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway made notable changes in its investment portfolio in Q3 2023, as revealed by the latest 13F report. Here’s the breakdown:

Purchased: Liberty Media $LLYVK, Sirius XM $SIRI, and the Atlanta Braves $BATRK

Reduced: Amazon $AMZN, AON $AON, Chevron $CVX, HP $HPQ, Markel Group $MKL, and Globe Life $GL

Entirely Sold: Activision Blizzard $ATVI, General Motors $GM, Celanese $CE, Johnson & Johnson $JNJ, Mondelez $MDLZ, Procter & Gamble $PG, and UPS $UPS.

As you can see from Buffett’s overall portfolio, he carries a concentrated portfolio of 45 stocks, with his top 5 positions making up 79.37% of his entire portfolio. Buffett has famously said that, “Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.”

One final thing to note is that Berkshire chose to not disclose one or more recent investments, seeking confidentiality from the SEC, as revealing these stakes could inflate the stock prices of the companies they’re building a position in.

🧸 Michael Burry’s Stock Portfolio

Michael Burry is a neurologist and hedge fund manager famous for predicting the subprime mortgage crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010, earning a personal profit of $100M for himself and $700M for his investors.

Burry is an active trader and also made several changes to his investment portfolio in Q3 2023, as per the latest 13F report. Here’s the breakdown:

Purchased: iShares Semiconductor ETF (Put) $SOXX, Booking Holdings (Put) $BKNG, Booking Holdings $BKNG, Alibaba $BABA, JD.com $JD

Added: Stellantis $STLA, Star Bulk Carriers $SBLK, Nexstar Media Group $NXST, Hudson Pacific Properties $HPP, Euronav $EURN, Safe Bulkers $SB

Reduced: Crescent Energy $CRGY, RealReal $REAL

Entirely sold (Top 5): SPY (Put) $SPY, QQQ (Put) $QQQ, Expedia $EXPE, Charter Communications $CHTR, Generac $GNRC

To summarize, Michael Burry closed his short positions against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, which previously had a notional value of $1.6B, shifting focus to a bearish bet on semiconductor stocks. The firm reduced its portfolio to 13 positions, and re-engaged in long positions with Alibaba and JD.com, while making automaker Stellantis his top long.

📣 An Exclusive Offer From My Friends at TrendSpider

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As you’ve probably seen, I love charts, and although I’m not a day trader, I do incorporate technical analysis before initiating long positions. I’m a long-term investor, but I recognize that sentiment, noise, and crowd psychology influence short-term price movements.

If the technical setup for a company I’m interested in buying becomes increasingly bearish, I prefer to wait in order to aim for the lowest possible cost basis. For several years, I’ve been using TrendSpider, and it’s definitely my favorite day-to-day tool.

I find great value in analyzing historical charts, and TrendSpider's seasonality feature is particularly useful for understanding how a company has historically performed each month.

Take Alibaba $BABA as an example. Over the last few days, shares of the company plunged after announced it wouldn't spin off its cloud computing division, resulting in it further dropping below its IPO price.

If you were contemplating buying the $BABA dip, you should note that since its IPO, Alibaba has ended the month of December green just 22% of the time, with an average monthly return of -5.12%.

You can leverage the historical performance data to make more informed decisions around position sizing. If the company has historically underperformed in December, it would be strategic to start with a smaller or medium-sized position now and plan to buy more in December, rather than committing to a large position immediately. This approach allows for adjusting the investment size based on the company's historical performance trends and short-term price action.

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💻 Bill Gates’ Stock Portfolio

Bill Gates is not only an incredible business owner but also a reputable investor. Bill and Melinda Gates employ external managers under their guidance to manage the $39B in investments under the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. Here are some of their moves based on their latest 13F report:

Purchased (Top 5): Apple $AAPL, iShares US Technology ETF $IYW, Meta Platforms $META, Adobe $ADBE, Applied Materials $AMT

Added: UPS $UPS, Walmart $WMT, Microsoft $MSFT

Reduced: Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B

At a high level, not too many big changes. They trimmed 10.39% of their Berkshire Hathaway holdings and likely used those funds for the 51 new additions to the portfolio. One of the additions was Nvidia, which was also purchased by Ray Dalio.

Notable Companies Reporting Earnings Next Week:

• Notable Companies Reporting Earnings Next Week:

  • Monday:

    • Agilent $A, Keysight Technologies $KEYS, Trip.com $TCOM, Zoom $ZM

  • Tuesday:

    • Nvidia $NVDA, Lowe’s $LOW, Medtronic $MDT, Analog Devices $ADI, Autodesk $ADSK, HP $HPQ

  • Wednesday:

    • Deere & Co $DE

  • Thursday:

    • Futu Holdings $FUTU

  • Friday:

    • H World Group $HTHT

All of the companies that are reporting earnings next week can be viewed here.

Buys

• Madrigal Pharmaceuticals ($MDGL)

  • Insider: Baker Bros. Advisors

    • # of Shares Purchased: 49,387

    • $ Amount: $23,610,579

    • SEC Forms: [1], [2], [3], [4]

• Air Products & Chemicals ($APD)

  • Insider: Seifi Ghasemi (CEO)

    • # of Shares Purchased: 11,000

    • $ Amount: $2,908,620

    • SEC Forms: [1]

• Block ($SQ)

  • Insider: Roelof Botha (Director)

    • # of Shares Purchased: 23,433

    • $ Amount: $1,194,485

    • SEC Forms: [1]

• Bill.com ($BILL)

  • Insider: David Hornik (Director)

    • # of Shares Purchased: 17,710

    • $ Amount: $1,000,438

    • SEC Forms: [1]

Sells

• TKO Group ($TKO)

  • Insider: Vincent McMahon (Director)

    • # of Shares Sold: 8,400,000

    • $ Amount: $641,844,000

    • SEC Forms: [1]

• Airbnb ($ABNB)

  • Insider: Joseph Gebbia (Director)

    • # of Shares Sold: 499,999

    • $ Amount: $62,674,829

    • SEC Forms: [1]

• Crowdstrike ($CRDW)

  • Insider: Godfrey Sullivan (Director)

    • # of Shares Sold: 150,000

    • $ Amount: $30,008,430

    • SEC Forms: [1]

• M ($CRDW)

  • Insider: Parker Harris (CTO)

    • # of Shares Sold: 117,808

    • $ Amount: $25,934,746

    • SEC Forms: [1]

🤝 Review of the Week