Wall Street and Main Street are both often easily impressed by short sellers. Sometimes short sellers are viewed with absolute hostility, and sometimes they are considered the smartest guys in the room. After all, short selling comes with potentially unlimited downside and it takes extra conviction to pay interest just to hold a position.

At certain times, short sellers are simply hated. After all, they are betting against the market and they are betting against prosperity. So what do investors try to make of it when short sellers increase their bets against the top stock holdings of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A)? Isn’t Buffett supposed to be considered the greatest investor of all time?

24/7 Wall St. often tracks many key short interest moves from sectors, themes and groups. It turns out that all four of the largest holdings, which account for well over half of Buffett’s total public stock holdings, saw an increase in their short interest as of the May 29 settlement date.

Berkshire Hathaway itself is not that active for a key market stock, but the short interest against Berkshire Hathaway actually went down. Are short sellers betting against Buffett’s picks, but not betting against Buffett himself?

Buffett’s top four holdings are credit card issuer American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP), beverage giant Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO), tech and IT giant International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and banking giant Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC). Three of the four holdings are Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks, and arguably Wells Fargo should be a Dow stock.

24/7 Wall St. has compared the May 29 settlement date to the mid-May settlement to see what has happened. We have also added color on just how large Buffett’s position is from the latest full Buffett holdings.

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American Express

This company saw its short interest rise by 0.6% to 12,483,441 shares, with about two days to cover. Berkshire Hathaway owns about 151 million shares of American Express, which makes this total short interest seem irrelevant on the surface. After all, Buffett owns almost 12 times more shares than all the short sellers have had to borrow to bet against the company. Still, AmEx has been having its share of problems of late. While it is valued cheaply against Visa and MasterCard, its dividend yield of 1.5% is still very low for a Dow stock and for a top financial stock.

American Express shares were recently trading at $79.17. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $86.04 and a 52-week trading range of $76.53 to $96.24.

Coca-Cola

The short interest in Coca-Cola rose by 1.2% to 29,176,302 shares as of the May 29 settlement date. Still, this is a lower short interest than we saw earlier in the year. Coca-Cola’s short interest almost certainly seems irrelevant to Buffett. After all, Buffett’s stake in Coca-Cola has been there for many years, has a cost-adjusted basis that has to be approaching zero and is close to 400 million shares. Buffett’s stake here is more than 13 times the size and value of the current short interest as a whole.

Coca-Cola shares were last seen at $40.20, with a consensus analyst price target of $44.82, and a 52-week range of $39.06 to $45.00. Coca-Cola’s current dividend yield is about 3.2%.

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IBM

IBM saw its short interest rise by 3.5% to 25.03 million shares as of the May 29 settlement date. This has continued to rise in 2015 despite shares now being up 10% from the 52-week lows. Maybe short sellers have increased their stake in IBM, but so has Berkshire Hathaway, taking the last viewed stake up to just over 79.5 million shares from a prior stake of 76.97 million shares.

The long and short of the matter is that Buffett’s total stake is still more than three times the entire short interest in IBM. Short sellers see what may be endless growth problems at IBM, but Buffett loves IBM’s low valuation and strong buybacks. That dividend hike recently also took the yield up to 3.1%, which short sellers have to pay out as well.

IBM shares closed at $165.68 recently, with a 52-week trading range $149.52 to $196.40. The consensus price target is $160.74, with the range from analysts being huge. The lowest price target is $125.00 and the highest analyst price target is $198.00.

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Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo saw its short interest gain as well on the May 29 settlement date, up to 30,156,415 shares from 28,732,355 shares in mid-May. This was the largest of the short seller gains, with a 5% increase from two-weeks earlier. Still, this is close to 10% smaller short interest than in February.

Buffett had previously halted his acquisition of Wells Fargo shares, but the new stake was shown at 470.3 million shares, up from 463.46 million shares at the end of 2014. Despite the rise in the short interest in May, Buffett’s stake in Wells Fargo is almost 16 times larger than that of the entire crowd of short sellers.

Shares of Wells Fargo recently traded at $56.70, and its 52-week trading range is $46.44 to $57.28 (all-time highs, and that is now!). Wells Fargo has a consensus price target of $57.56.

Berkshire Hathaway

So, we know that short sellers increased their bets against the core holdings of Buffett, but what is interesting is that short sellers lightened up their bet against the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) shares. The B-shares saw the short interest rise fall to 7,603,909 shares at the end of May, down 7.3% from the 8,200,845 shares short mid-month.

Berkshire Hathaway shares were trading at $140.13, down handily from a 52-week high. The B-shares have a 52-week trading range of $122.72 to $152.94. With an average volume of close to 3 million shares, this represents a days to cover of about only about 2.5.

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Another interesting issue out there about Buffett and short sellers is that he probably encourages short sellers to be active in his stocks. His average purchase prices are far lower in all of Berkshire’s top four holdings, except for IBM. Also, Buffett probably thinks this just means that the short sellers will have to be buyers of the stock down the road — hopefully at higher share prices.

All things considered, maybe Buffett even asks his firm’s holding his shares in custody to lend his shares out for extra income from stock loans.

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