Billionaires Dumping Stocks

[Mach]

My question here would be..... what is a regular year for them in the first place, comparable numbers?

Anything to this, or is it just a book selling piece?

http://www.moneynews.com/MKTNews/bil...source=taboola

“Companies will be spending more money on borrowing costs than business expansion costs. That means lower profit margins, lower dividends, and less hiring. Plus, more layoffs.”

No investors, let alone billionaires, will want to own stocks with falling profit margins and shrinking dividends. So if that’s why Buffett, Paulson, and Soros are dumping stocks, they have decided to cash out early and leave Main Street investors holding the bag.

[Zippyjuan]

Warren Buffet just spent $23 billion buying Heinz. Bought more shares in GM today too along with increasing shares in Wells Fargo. He is hardly "dumping" stocks. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100461689

Not counting Heinz, Berkshire's holdings are (as of end of fourth quarter in December) roughly the same in value as in September (end of third quarter).

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...anges/1921247/

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B, BRK-A) and Warren Buffett may have surprised the markets with the $28 billion purchase of H.J. Heinz Company (HNZ) announced Thursday.

But there is more than just the latest deal announcement to consider. Stock markets have been rising in 2013 and Berkshire has been outperforming the broader market so far.

The conglomerate's most recent U.S.-listed equity holdings have been released. Berkshire Portfolio managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler are getting even more entrenched as far as their ability to add to positions.

Berkshire's total equity holdings at the end of 2012 were $75.3 billion, more or less the same as the September quarter. Third-quarter eliminations from the portfolio, reported in November 2012, were CVS Caremark (CVS), Dollar General (DG), and Ingersoll Rand (IR).

While Heinz was not listed as a formal holding of Berkshire in its 13G securities filing for the fourth quarter, the Berkshire, 3G buyout of H.J. Heinz (HNZ), announced Thursday suggests the company will soon be a preferred holding of the Berkshire empire.

Transactions lists for Gerorge Soros do not show any selling but more buying of stocks. http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.ph...e=George+Soros

Finally, billionaire George Soros recently sold nearly all of his bank stocks, including shares of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. Between the three banks, Soros sold more than a million shares.

The article claims Soros sold all of his banking stocks but look at the list. It shows him BUYING more shares in CitiGroup (adding over 400% to what he already had on 12/31/12) , Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Capital One, American Express. He has over 8 million shares in Citigroup alone. Article is incorrect. (Buffett did sell his shares of Intel back in August- that was true- he owned the shares less than one year http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Th...ets-60-million ).

From the article:

It’s very likely that these professional investors are aware of specific research that points toward a massive market correction, as much as 90%.

They are not acting like they expect any such massive "correction" of 90%. They are still buying- not dumping. I say yeah- trying to sell a book (and fears). DOW is not going anywhere near 1400 in the near future.

Again the article:

Warren Buffett, who has been a cheerleader for U.S. stocks for quite some time, is dumping shares at an alarming rate. He recently complained of “disappointing performance” in dyed-in-the-wool American companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods.

In terms of percent of his portfolio, Kraft is still his tenth biggest holding in terms of dollar amount. Proctor and Gamble #5. http://warrenbuffettstockportfolio.com/ Doesn't seem he is dumping them (the article doesn't say he is but it implies that he is- a bit misleading on that account).

[Mach]

Thanks for some numbers, that's the first thing I thought of when reading that article..... these guys are billionaires, they live in a whole different perspective, a couple million here and there is, just another day.

[cubical]

Too much money is currently entering the system for there to be any big/permanent downturn in stocks.

[FSP-Rebel]

Silver sure tanked last week.

[LibForestPaul]

So what are Berkshires asset allocation year to year? Cash, gold, commodity holdings goig up % wise?