Warren Buffett Goes Out On Top, Beating The Mag 7 Stocks

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

Key Points

  • Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A / BRK.B) is up 19% YTD, outperforming many “Magnificent Seven” stocks as investors favor Warren Buffett’s diversified and conservative equity portfolio.

  • Despite underperformance in positions like Chevron (NYSE: CVX), Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ: KHC), and Sirius XM (NASDAQ: SIRI), strength in banks, American Express (NYSE: AXP), and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) has lifted overall returns.

  • The appeal lies in Berkshire’s concentrated holdings curated by Buffett, offering investors diversified exposure with a long-term, disciplined value approach.

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Warren Buffett Goes Out On Top, Beating The Mag 7 Stocks

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Transcript:

[00:00:04] Doug McIntyre: So Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway is up 19% this year, whereas the UN Magnificent seven, I haven’t looked at their composite recently, but they’re not up, they’re not, they, they may not be over, they may be underperforming the market. Why are people buying Berkshire Hathaway in a market that’s a very choppy,

[00:00:30] Lee Jackson: I have to admit it.

[00:00:30] Lee Jackson: It was surprising to me and I wrote a piece recently. The detail that there, there’s three stocks in there that are down, pretty good this year and, and it’s, Chevron and Kraft Heinz and Sirius XM.

[00:00:48] Doug McIntyre: I’m serious.

[00:00:49] Lee Jackson: Satellite radio guys, they’re all down and they all yield 5%. But the other items in there, the banks have done well.

[00:00:57] Lee Jackson: The American Express has done well. It’s just he’s had Coca-Cola’s done well, he’s had, it’s just been a banner year and I, I think we’ve written about this and certainly talked about it, is he outperformed the S&P last year, by, not, not a ton, but by two or three percentage points.

[00:01:15] Lee Jackson: And it’s undoubtedly he’ll do it this year.

Warren Buffett
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[00:01:19] Doug McIntyre: Well, to me, Berkshire Hathaway, now I’m gonna set aside the private businesses like the railroad business, although right insurance. He owns some insurance companies that well managed, probably throw off a lot of cash, but it’s really 33 stocks curated by Warren Buffet.

[00:01:38] Doug McIntyre: It isn’t just 33 stocks, right? Yeah. It’s not like owning the S&P 500 or something like that. You’ve got the greatest investor in history has sat down, he’s bought shares in 33 companies. And you ask me why it’s up 19% this year. It’s because, people sit there and, and most of the stocks they buy are one-offs.

[00:02:04] Doug McIntyre: Okay? NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) chips, meta Facebook, Alphabet, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). What this guy has done is he’s spread his risk over 33 high quality companies. Now you’ve made the point. They’re not all performing well, but you’ve got a guy like Warren Buffet and, and people are buying his brain. The reason that the stock is 19% is you get to, you get to rent a space in Warren Buffet’s brain when you buy Berkshire Hathaway.

[00:02:38] Doug McIntyre: Yeah. To me, I love Berkshire Hathaway. It’s not, I love Warren Buffet, but that’s not the reason I love Cherry Coke. But that’s not the reason. The reason that I love it is, is that, it is a curated basket of stocks further backed by a curated basket of private companies. All of which have been chosen by him.

[00:03:05] Lee Jackson: Well, and is interesting because, I mean, we’ve written about this as well, that it is like seven stocks make up 75% of the portfolio, seven. It’s much more concentrated. Most money managers would never do that. They’d never be that concentrated. But he takes a shot and he goes in large and he stays en large, And, I think you’re right. I think now people, they’ve become so flooded with, with data and so flooded with, an ETF for every possible trading thing. They’re just like, no, I’ll buy Berkshire. It doesn’t pay a dividend. So it’s not like they’re buying it for growth and income, it’s just strictly a growth stock.

[00:03:53] Lee Jackson: But they’re like, I’ll put this in my, college fund for my grandson and 20 years when he goes to school, or 18 years when he goes to school. It’ll be higher. I’m sure it will. And it, it will be.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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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