samedi 16 mai 2020

Transactions of the last quarter (especially in march)

I'm changing the formula of my traditional "ce que les meilleurs achètent" posts. This time, I'll write about interesting transactions (in my view) from interesting investors.

Giverny Capital
They bought a big chunk of Five Below (FIVE) shares during the last quarter. Their FIVE stake now represents 2,35% of their portfolio (0,04% before). By the way, I was a big supporter of FIVE in the past, but I've sold all my shares some time ago.

There was a substantial increase of their stake in Bank of America (+34%) and Progressive (+25%). Both companies are at least OK, but I don't think that financials and insurance companies is an easy way to invest.

They sold their entire stake of O'Reilly, which is in my opinion one of the best US stocks. I don't understand why they did that. Perhaps they're crazy? They also reduced a lot their stake in Union Pacific (-67%), a great company, almost as good as Canadian National (CNR.TO).

Chuck Akre
Chuck initiated an important position in Adobe (3,5% of his portfolio or 363 million dollars if you prefer) during last quarter. He also initiated a position in Live Nation (LYV), a concert company. I'm not sure that it's a good idea to invest in that kind of company in 2020. Actually, it sounds like a very dumb idea. But I respect Chuck anyway, even if that investment may indicate an early stage of dementia. On the buy side, he also increased his positions in Mastercard (+8%), Visa (+7%), Roper (+8%) and Carmax (+21%). All of them being great companies. But my favorite are by far Mastercard and Visa.

An interesting thing about his selling is that he sold about 90% of his Berkshire Hathaway (class A and B) shares. Probably to have more money to invest in stocks that dropped much more than BRK (that was the strategy of someone in the comment section, a few weeks ago). It's an interesting strategy, if that's really what Akre did. Because when Berkshire drops by 10% and Mastercard drops by 30%, you're probably right to sell the first to buy the second, when it's available for 22 times earnings.

Warren Buffett
What the fuck? He did almost nothing during the last quarter. Of course, he sold his airlines stocks, but apart from that, the only important thing he did was to reduce his Goldman Sachs stake by 84% (now 0,17% of his portfolio... why keeping such a low position?). Frankly, I'm puzzled about so little transactions by one of the richest conglomerate in the world.

Ok, now let's take a look at 3 stocks I've talked about recently and which seem attractive to me: Google, Facebook and Berkshire Hathaway.

Google
Pat Dorsey (+352% to his position, now 13,7% of his portfolio);
Seth Klarman (new position representing 5,2% of his portfolio);
Thomas Russo (+25,9% to his position, now 4,6% of his portfolio).

Facebook
Pat Dorsey (+35% to his position, now 25,5% of his portfolio);
Michael Burry (new position representing 12,7% of his portfolio), I don't know who is this guy BTW;
Seth Klarman (new position representing 4,9% of his portfolio).

Berkshire Hathaway:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (reduced their position by 10%, now 47% of the portfolio);
Allan Mecham (reduced the position by 26%, now 38,3% of the portfolio);
Glen Greenberg (+18%, now 18% of the portfolio);
Bill Ackman (+36%, now 15,2% of the portfolio).

Many other people were active on these 3 stocks. I neglicted some of them. You may look by yourself because there's a little bias here.


2 commentaires:

  1. Early stage dementia or he knows something we don't which is probably a lot. Saudi Arabia's public investment fund also bought $500 million worth of Live Nation stock late April.

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  2. Pour giverny, ma surprise était la position dans dans autohome... Une cie chinoise...

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