Berkshire's Buys and (Mostly) Sells

ORACLE OF OMAHA | Warren Buffett seems to have soured on financial stocks and semiconductors.

- DAN BURROWS

This time of year, as shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway make the pilgrimage to Nebraska to hear from the Oracle of Omaha in person at the company's May 6 annual meeting, we like to check on Berkshire's diverse investment portfolio. We're able to do that via the documents that the company is required to file each quarter with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The latest batch of filings show what chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, or his co-portfolio managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, were buying and selling at the end of 2022, providing some insight into what the greatest investor of all time might be thinking.

Buffettologists-and the rest of the market-got something of a shock when the latest portfolio moves came to light. Berkshire sold off most of its stake in TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING in the fourth quarter. Given that Buffett (or his co-managers) had initiated the Taiwan Semiconductor stake only a quarter earlier, it's understandable if investors-especially any who copied the move-now have a brutal case of whiplash.

After all, Buffett is famous for saying that his favorite holding period for a stock is "forever." When Berkshire Hathaway revealed that it had bought 60.1 million shares of Taiwan Semiconductor in the third quarter of 2022, it was only natural for people to assume it was a long-term bet on the world's largest pure-play semiconductor foundry.