Buffett Dumping More & More Moody’s (MCO)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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It wasn’t that long ago that we gave a list of stocks that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) needed to dump to help pay for its Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI) acquisition.  Moody’s Corp. (NYSE: MCO) was one of those stocks.  He had already lightened up some since, and on Monday evening came a filing at the SEC confirming that Buffett was dumping more stock.

The filing was 3 groups of stock coming to a total of 3,454,791 share sold.  That leaves Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway with 31,902,602 shares.  We doubt he’ll be out of this position entirely by the end of the year, but the writing has been on the wall here for two years that the ratings agency game and dominance is over.

The weighted average sales price here was north of $26.00, and Moody’s common stock has a 52-week trading range of $15.57 to $31.79.  This was a $60 and $70 stock as recently as mid-2007 when the cracks in the ratings agency model were already coming front and center.  Buffett has finally capitulated on this one.

Jon C. Ogg

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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