Greg Abel Has 75% of Berkshire Hathaway's Portfolio Invested in Just 8 Stocks. Is the 1 That's Lagging Behind the S&P 500 the Best Buy Now?
It hasn't even been a year since Warren Buffett made Greg Abel chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) . Already, Abel has made a number of major portfolio overhauls, including trimming or eliminating stakes in many smaller positions, catapulting Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to a top-five holding, and identifying Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) , American Express (NYSE: AXP) , Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) , and Moody's (NYSE: MCO) as companies Berkshire expects to compound for decades. Abel's approach is a testament to Buffett's philosophy of finding exceptional businesses and holding concentrated positions in them, rather than over-diversifying into companies Berkshire deems lower-quality. Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) , Alphabet, Chevron (NYSE: CVX) , Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) , and Mitsubishi (OTC: MSBHF) (OTC: MTSUY) make up a combined 75% of Berkshire's $365.2 billion public equity portfolio. With the exception of credit-card company American Express, all of these core holdings have outperformed the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) during the past year. Continue reading