[SeekAndFind]

Some outliers:

Buffett likes Japan. He touted his five stakes in enterprises like ITOCHU, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo, which "operate in a manner somewhat similar to Berkshire itself." It's a "small but important exception to our U.S.-based focus" due to the companies' "financial records, managements, and attitude in respect to their investors."

Capital deployment is key here, as well as appropriate dividends and repurchases, and "far less aggressive compensation programs than their U.S. counterparts." Buffett also substantially increased his holdings of Treasury bills in 2024, given improving yields on the highly liquid short-term securities.

Top holdings:

Apple makes up 28% of Berkshire's "marketable equities" portfolio.

The next big stakes are American Express (AXP) at 17%, Bank of America (BAC) at 11%, Coca-Cola (KO) at 9%, Chevron (CVX) at 6%, and Occidental Petroleum (OXY) and Moody's (MCO) at 5% and 4%, respectively.

Taken together, these seven names make up four-fifths of the portfolio.

[poinq]

Just to keep everyone in perspective. Warren Buffett was one of the causes of several market crashes and especially the 2008 crash. As the owner of Moody’s he engineered the fake valuations of mortgages. Moody’s literally caused the crash along with the GSEs (Freddie and Fannie) and S&P plus Fitch. Plus Warren was the single largest owner of large banks. So you can call the 2008 financial crises a Berkshire lead crises. He was in every important part of it. And had it not been for his ownership of the Washington Post, you would have been attacking him first.

Other scandals that he was involved in include Wells Fargo and Salomon Brothers. Warren speaks with a forked tongue. That grandfather image allows him to evade all blame while having his fingerprints all over the crime scenes.