The New 13F Filings Were Wild...

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]This video is brought to you by Simply Wall Street. What are the big money managers buying and selling at the moment? That is what we're going to be discussing in this video because there are some very interesting moves going down right now from people like Warren Buffett, Bill Aman, Seth Clarman, and many others. So, every 3 months, investment managers with over 100 million in assets under management are required to file what's known as a 13F filing with the SEC. Now, this of course sounds very technical and very boring, but it's these documents that actually show us what these guys and gals are investing in at the current time. So, for small fry investors trying to get a little peak behind the curtain, these boring documents are actually absolute gold. Now, normally there aren't that many things to talk about, particularly when the market is riding, you know, close to all-time highs. After all, these are the best value investors in the world, and usually they aren't buying much when the market is super expensive. But this time we have some very interesting things to talk about.

[00:00:55]And I want to start this list with the granddaddy himself, Mr. Warren Buffett.

[00:00:59]Because arguably the biggest news story of this round of 13F filings is that Berkshire Hathaway just tripled their position in Google ASA. And they added a billion dollars of Cshares. And the difference between A and C shares is that you get voting rights with the A shares but not the C shares. So the A shares are now worth 15.6 6 billion and that slots in as Bergkshire's seventh largest position. But the question here is was this really Buffett? Now we do know that despite Buffett stepping down as CEO of Bergkshire, he does still preside over major equity investments at Bergkshire. But at the same time, he's been very clear that many of these technology companies that are in the MAG 7 are very far outside his circle of competence. He's also noted that despite being involved, the final decision on all matters now rests with Greg Ael. So, in all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if this investment was actually led by Greg. But that's a little bit besides the point. The real question is why is Bergkshire buying Google? And I think this question has a simpler answer than people think. Google is an exceptionally strong business. It's a wonderful company at a reasonable price. As you can see from Simply Wall Street, Google has grown their revenue and earnings exceptionally well over time with no real evidence of that slowing down. They are very cash flow positive. Their balance sheet is rock solid with way more cash on hand than they have as total debt. Honestly, it's one of those rare financial fortresses, kind of like Burkshire Hathaway in that respect. Now there is of course some risk with the challenge of LLMs to their core Google search business but they are also very much in the AI race as well with Gemini and they are certainly better capitalized than some of their main competitors like ChatGpt or OpenAI. The one question with Google though of course comes down to value. It's a very high quality business but does it cost too much? And as you can see from the valuation metrics certainly doesn't look like Google is the best bargain of all time. 17% overvalued based on the inbuilt discounted cash flow analysis with a current price to earnings ratio of about 30. So it isn't what I would call, you know, a cheap stock, but for what it is, it's also not crazy expensive because remember, you would definitely expect to pay a premium based on quality. You know, their moat, their growth, their balance sheet. So I think this is honestly just a case of Greg Ael or Warren Buffett buying a wonderful company at what they would call a fair price. So that's the Google buy. Then other news out of the Berkshire portfolio is that either Buffett or Abel are back flirting with the airlines.

[00:03:28]They've added a $2.6 billion position in Delta, which is interesting because Buffett has been burnt a few times before by airline stocks. They've also reduced 35% in Chevron this quarter. But actually the more notable thing to talk about, yes there is a more notable thing is actually the companies that they have sold out of completely. Because get this, in this quarter alone, Bergkshire sold out of 16 positions entirely. I don't think I have ever seen a call like that before in the Burkshire portfolio.

[00:03:58]And I don't think it's a huge coincidence that this just so happened to be Greg's first 3 months being in charge of Berkshire. But to be clear, nobody quite knows the exact reason as to the Kull. We can only hypothesize.

[00:04:12]Yet having said that, there is one thing that does stand out about the call and that is that a lot of the stocks sold this quarter were known as Todd stocks.

[00:04:21]So Todd Combmes was of course one of the three portfolio managers of Berkshire up until he left to join JP Morgan. And it appears that many of the smaller positions he had invested in under Berkshire have been called in the last 3 months. Names like Visa, Mastercard, Dominoes, Amazon and a couple of others.

[00:04:37]So if I had to place a bet, I think the sell-off was a combination of those two factors. Greg maybe doing a bit of spring cleaning now that he's in charge and also the selling down of Todd Comb's portfolio. It's also worth mentioning none of these cells dramatically changed the portfolio. As you can see here, the largest impact was Visa, which had a 1% impact to the overall portfolio. But nonetheless, very interesting. I'd honestly love to hear what you guys have to say in the comments, too. Also, while we're here, I just wanted to shout out Simply Wall Street for providing the data for this video. I've actually put all of the new notable buyers from the super investors into a portfolio over on Simply Wall Street. I've also put together a portfolio of the sells that you might want to check out, including some stocks that you might want to check out that didn't make the cut for this video. So, if you want to analyze some of these stocks for yourself, check out the link in the description or pin comment. And if you like Simply Wall Street, you use that link to score 40% off a paid plan. But with that said, moving on into the next big move of the 13F filings. It's actually one from Bill Aman. He has pulled the trigger on Microsoft. So, Persing Square has opened a $2 billion position that puts it as the fourth largest position in their US portfolio. Why? Well, again, this is one of those really, really solid businesses. Microsoft have a really solid balance sheet. They have an exceptional track record of revenue and earnings growth. As you can see, and this kind of gets to the nitty-gritty of it, their free cash flow isn't growing at the moment. And that is of course because they're currently spending massive amounts on the AI arms race, building data centers, power infrastructure, buying GPUs, and so on and so forth. And honestly, that has spooked quite a few investors who are now starting to doubt whether they're going to actually see a solid return on this just gigantic investment. Having listened to Bill though, I listened to him speak at Value X recently in Omaha.

[00:06:20]I do know for a fact he does not see that as a problem. That is his opinion.

[00:06:24]He does not see that as a problem. But with so many other investors selling, it did actually cause Microsoft to fall up to 25% across Q1. And this is exactly what value investors look for, right?

[00:06:37]When fear takes over and it causes a sudden drop in the share price of a really high quality business. So as the stock was falling, Bill Aman was loading up the truck. And as you can see, at a PE of 25, it's not as crazy expensive as many of the other Mag 7 companies are with their PE ratios up in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, and so on. A PE of 25, of course, meaning that investors are willing to pay 25 times the company's current annual earnings as a share price. Then, as we can see from the discounted cash flow perspective, Simply Wall Street has it as 27% undervalued from their inbuilt calculator. So you can understand why a big value investor like Aman that isn't worried about the AI spend has decided that now or Q1 when it was even cheaper is the time to buy.

[00:07:22]Also one more bit of news out of the Persing Square portfolio. Bill has actually gone the opposite direction to Berkshire basically selling out of his position in Google in the last quarter.

[00:07:31]You can see Aman has basically sold the entire position there. And in other other news, he's also added 20% to his Amazon position over the last 3 months, which now moves up into the second slot in the Persing Square portfolio. And that leads us directly into the next big news story of the 13F filings. And that is that Seth Clarman, the author of Margin of Safety himself, has also added to his position in Amazon, increasing the size of the bet by 47%. So Clarman has really doubled down on Amazon. It sits as his number one stock, taking up 12.7% of Bow Post's US portfolio, and it certainly looks like he has timed this one to absolute perfection. Have a look at the one-year stock chart. As you can see, in early February, the stock fell about 18%. Yes, in the matter of literally a week, the market believed Amazon's entire business was suddenly worth 18% less than the week before. And honestly, this is why we have to keep an eye on our watch list constantly.

[00:08:29]Sometimes the market can overreact and it can panic very very quickly and this was one of those times. But why did it drop so much? Well, on the 5th of February, Amazon actually released their Q4 earnings and it worried investors because they announced that they expected to spend roughly $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, mostly on AI infrastructure, AWS expansion, chips, data centers, networking, etc. So, it's the same story as Microsoft, right? Although this one is a little bit more pronounced because as you can see while revenue and earnings are trending up the decline in free cash flow is much more obvious. And then they came out and said, "Yeah guys, sorry. It's going to get worse." But that's the thing though, a voluntary increase in capital expenditures is not a death sentence, right? There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the business. They're just choosing to spend more money. You know, it's still been growing healthily.

[00:09:22]Analysts expect growth in both revenue and earnings to continue into the future. And at the end of the day, if something is going wrong, capital expenditures can just be paused. So to argue that an announcement of increased growth capex leads to the entire company being worth 18% less in one week, honestly, it's just stupid. It's dumb.

[00:09:40]It's emotional. It's panic. It's not based on fundamentals. And that's also why you see it bouncing back so hard when investors realize maybe they're a bit too jumpy. And interestingly, when Amazon posted their next quarterly earnings for Q1, they noted that actually AWS growth was stronger than expected for the quarter, they reaffirmed they were supply constraint, not demand constrained, and investors relaxed. You know, maybe the increased spending on AI or data centers might be justified after all. So, they're the kind of weird short-term moments of panic that these guys look for. And in this instance, Seth Clarman and Bill Aman both capitalized. So overall, they're the main stories out of the 13F filings this time around. But there were a few more things of note. Lee Louu from Himalaya Capital, who used to manage money for Charlie Manga, just sold 71% of his Bank of America position, which is quite notable, but I don't have much information I can add to that beyond the fact that he sold it. Monish Pri didn't do all that much. He did sell out of Aaris and reduce 25% in Trans Ocean, which are both offshore drilling companies. He still keeps that bet on metallurgical or coing coal. And another bit of news actually out of Bill Aman was he finally sold out of Hilton which has been a stock in his portfolio all the way back to 2018. And one more thing I also I saw that Howard Marx opened a new position in Pingio Duo. Although when I went and looked at it, it turns out this is a $493,000 position out of a $4 billion portfolio.

[00:11:05]So probably not that groundbreaking. And with that said, that is just about it.

[00:11:10]Just to finish off, I again wanted to remind you that I've actually put together two portfolios that you can check out over on Simply Wall Street.

[00:11:17]The Notable Super Investor buys and I've also done one for the notable cells as well. So definitely check out those two portfolios if you're keen to learn more about these stocks. And a reminder that using the link in the description and pin comment will get you 40% off a paid plan. I really like their platform. I would encourage you to do a bit of an explore. You can check it out for free.

[00:11:37]No credit card required, which is awesome and very rare these days. But with that said, the only other thing I wanted to mention before we wrap up is I just wanted to say a massive thank you to you guys for sending me your photos with the book. It's very exciting to finally see copies in hands, you know, on bookshelves. I know you're probably sick of me talking about it at this point, but I do just want to reiterate that I am very thankful for all of those who have picked up a copy. WY US really took a chance on this book. The truth is not that many people care for the slow, deliberate, rational Buffett approach in a world of, you know, flashy, fast-paced investing strategies, crypto speculation, and whatnot. So, for me, I really wanted to do my best in repaying their faith in me. So, I'm sorry if it's been a lot with the promo, but I very much appreciate your support with it all. Uh, so thank you guys. You guys are great. Have a good day. Uh, if you made it this far into the video, drop a like.

[00:12:24]Leave me a comment saying that you got to the end. Um, all right. Take it easy.

[00:12:27]I'll see you in the next one.