Few if any money managers command the attention of professional and everyday investors quite like Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett. Since becoming CEO in the mid-1960s, he’s overseen a cumulative return in his company’s Class A shares (BRK.A) of more than 5,500,000%, and briefly witnessed his company surpass a $1 trillion market cap.
Investors often wait on pins and needles for the quarterly release of Berkshire’s Form 13F. A 13F provides investors with a concise snapshot of what Wall Street’s brightest money managers purchased and sold in the latest quarter.
But here’s something that might come as a bit of a surprise: Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F fails to tell the full story of what’s under the company’s hood.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.
The Oracle of Omaha has a secret $602 million portfolio, and three AI stocks are getting the heave-ho
In 1998, Berkshire Hathaway acquired General Re in an all-share deal valued at $22 billion. Although the crown jewel of this deal was General Re’s reinsurance operations, it also owned a specialty investment firm known as New England Asset Management (NEAM). When the deal finalized in December 1998, Buffett became the new owner of NEAM.
Institutional investors with at least $100 million in assets under management are required to file a 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As of the June-ended quarter, New England Asset Management held $602 million in securities, and is therefore required to disclose what stocks have been bought and sold.
Even though Warren Buffett doesn’t manage the assets held by NEAM the same way he does for the 43-stock, $309 billion portfolio he oversees at Berkshire Hathaway, what NEAM owns is, ultimately, under the umbrella of Buffett’s company. Thus, New England Asset Management is, effectively, Warren Buffett’s $602 million secret portfolio.
Similar to Buffett’s trading activity over the last two years, the advisors overseeing NEAM’s portfolio have predominantly been net-sellers of equities. What was once a portfolio that…
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