Maybe Warren Buffett Is The Buyer of Last Resort in Financials (BRK-A, WFC, BAC, USB)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Yesterday evening’s FED FILINGS shows some interesting increases in holdings in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A).  He boosted holdings in his financial stocks, and it is helping the stocks today.  Keep in mind that this has a June 30 cut-off date, so Berkshire Hathaway will have actually been feeling some pain in these names.  Here are the increased holdings in financials and how it is helping the shares today after his filing:

Bank of America (BAC), up 1.7% today at $48.68. June 29 close: $48.89

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), up 1.2% at $34.07. June 29 close: $34.86.

U.S. Bancorp (USB), up 1.7% at $30.05. June 29 close: $32.95.

Interestingly enough, these have all held their ground better than the overall market since that cut-off date.  Maybe the Oracle of Omaha knows more than the market afterall.  Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) shares are at 111,100 today and closed at 109,475 on June 29.  Maybe the Oracle himself is a better investment than his underlying picks.

We made a list of the potential "whale of an acquisition" targets that fit certain ‘Berkshire" criteria after Warrnen Buffett made his statement.  So far, he’s been dark and quiet and has yet to do any such deal.  He’s probably also watching Dean hoping it heads more west and out range of much of the reinsurance-exposure areas where a hurricane would hit his pocketbook.

Jon C. Ogg
August 15, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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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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