Warren Buffett-led Berkshire Hathaway surprised investors by appearing to make no stock purchases in a volatile third quarter, while selling more than a dozen stocks, including blue-chip holdings like Chevron and Amazon.
Details of Berkshire's Q3 stock trades came in a regulatory filing late Tuesday.
Berkshire Hathaway Sells These Stocks
The 13F filing Tuesday listed no new stock positions or additions to existing stock holdings in Q3, even though an earlier Berkshire 10Q filing for Q3 showed $1.7 billion in stock purchases (and $7 billion in stock sales) during the quarter, Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust, wrote in a research note Wednesday.
"It is possible that Berkshire was able to delay disclosing a new holding, or the additions were in international stocks that do not need to be announced" in a 13F filing, Stone said.
In Q3, Berkshire did, however, reorganize its Liberty Media Sirius holdings, Tuesday's filing showed. As a result, it now holds Atlanta Braves, a holding company for the baseball team, which split off from Liberty Media in July.
Among Q3 sells, Berkshire reduced its large holdings in Dow stock Chevron as well as HP. Berkshire also pared small positions in Amazon stock and Globe Life, among others.
The Chevron stock position has been trimmed for four straight quarters, by Stone's calculation. It remains one Berkshire's largest stock holdings, with the stake worth over $18 billion.
In Q3, Berkshire Hathaway completely ditched General Motors and UPS. Among Dow Jones stock holdings, the company exited Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson.
These were all small positions in the company's roughly $313 billion equity portfolio, according to the latest Berkshire 13F data tracked by whalewisdom.com.
Activision Blizzard also left Berkshire's stock portfolio in the quarter. Microsoft completed its deal to buy the video game publisher in October.
Investors follow Berkshire's 13F filings to learn where and how legendary billionaire investor Buffett is putting money to work for the company he leads.
Top Warren Buffett Stocks Include Apple
The top 10 positions in Berkshire's stock investment portfolio include Apple, Bank of America and Occidental Petroleum. Aside from the reductions in Chevron and HP holdings, those positions were left unchanged in Q3, the 13F filing showed Tuesday.
Apple stock made up 50% of Berkshire's portfolio at the end of September, vs. 51% at the end of June. Shares of the iPhone maker fell slightly during Q3, part of a broader sell-off over the period.
Year to date, AAPL stock is up 45%.
