Billionaire Warren Buffett is many things- one of the world’s most successful fund managers, legendary philanthropist and owner of over 60 companies. Now the “Oracle of Omaha” as he is known has revealed the third quarter trades of his $169 billion Berkshire Hathaway fund. The result: a valuable glimpse into which stocks Buffett likes, and which he doesn’t.
Bear in mind that the 13F forms filed with the SEC reveal trades made in the last quarter rather than the current quarter- so it is possible that the fund’s positions have since changed. Nonetheless, his moves are still carefully tracked by investors round the world.
Here we also include TipRanks’ stock insights from Wall Street’s best-performing analysts. Does the Street sentiment match Buffett’s? We look at the outlook on these stocks from the best-performing analysts on Wall Street. These are the analysts that consistently outperform the market with the highest success rate and average return. Let’s delve in now:
Buys- AAPL, BAC, SYF
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Buffett has continued to load up on AAPL stock. In Q3 he snapped up another 3.9 million shares- taking the fund’s total AAPL holding 134 million AAPL shares valued at $20.6 billion. AAPL is now the fund’s third largest holding- coming up behind Wells Fargo and Kraft Heinz. After missing the boat on the recent tech sector rally (he recently admitted that he “blew it” by not investing in GOOGL earlier), Buffett has compensated by plowing money into AAPL since he initiated the position in Q1 2016.
Indeed, Buffett recently gave investors the lowdown on just why he likes AAPL stock so much. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting (according to Silver Value Partners’ Gary Mishuris), he said he likes the stock because:
– AAPL is more of a consumer company than a tech company (Buffett famously avoids tech stocks).
– Apple’s brand and eco-system results in a loyal community of AAPL users with high switching costs. Consumers stick with AAPL products because the ecosystem (iTunes, apps, etc.) keeps them with AAPL.
