저자: TheQualityInvestor진행자 · 외국인
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워런 버핏 등 슈퍼 인베스터들의 2024년 4분기 13F 매매를 분석. 버핏은 S&P500 ETF를 매도했으나 비중은 0.01%로 미미하며, 은행주(BofA, COF, Citigroup 등)를 대폭 축소해 은행 업종에 대한 비관을 시사. 테리 스미스는 상위 보유종목 대부분 축소, 아크맨은 Brookfield 매수·Chipotle 축소, Chuck Akre도 대거 매도. 진행자는 밸류에이션이 높고 시장이 조정 중이라 보며, 이 투자자들이 2025년 1분기에 매수에 나설지 관심을 표함. 개별 자산에 대한 명시적 방향 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
Nothing is safe. The bears are on the loose and they are starving, running, and trampling over all corners of the market. We investors have nowhere to hide. During these minor market hiccups, I always remind myself of the famous quote from Warren Buffett. Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
Well, we have to ask, did the legendary Buffett follow his own advice this past quarter? How about some other super investors that we like to track? Welcome to the Quality Investor. The headlines were relentless. Warren Buffett makes stunning move by selling S&P 500 funds he told everyone to buy, harangued the Daily Mail.
Why did Warren Buffett just sell investments he's recommended millions of others to buy, timidly asks Yahoo Finance. Warren Buffett shockingly dumps two stocks he told everyone to buy, read the finger-wagging headline from Investor's Business Daily. And it's true, Warren Buffett sold his S&P 500 ETFs, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF SPY, and the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF VOO.
We'll get into Warren Buffett buys and sells this quarter along with those of a few other of my favorite super investors. But before we get into it, please like this video and subscribe to the channel. It only takes a second, helps us grow, and you can stay on top of all the quality businesses in the market.
But regarding Buffett, the mainstream media is miffed. A quote from the Investor Business Daily article says, unloading these funds goes against the advice Buffett gave to investors in the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report. The bottom line, when trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients, Buffett wrote.
Both large and small investors should stick with low-cost index funds. The article then posits the question, so why isn't Buffett taking his own advice? The article doesn't really go on to answer their question, but does state the S&P 500 is dominated by eight tech stocks, which account for a third of its value.
It also notes that the forward PE ratio stands at 22.2, which is above the five-year average of 19.8 and the 10-year average of 18.3. It appears that the Oracle of Omaha has struck again. He recognized the greed of the market and sold. In the past 10 days, the S&P 500 is down 4.3%. The Nasdaq is down 8.4%.
Have we entered the bear market? I don't know. A couple quarters ago in my Super Investor video, I asked, is a crash incoming? I concluded that valuations are certainly stretched and some speculation is happening, but nothing compared to the other crashes in the 2000s. Of those aforementioned tech stocks, all of them, with the possible exception of Tesla, are backed by real and growing earnings and cash flow.
Right now, it seems the market is correcting itself. But whether a reset or a crash, neither should bother the long-term investor of quality businesses. A large cash pile, which Buffett has, and a sale in the market means a buying spree. But what did the Super Investor activity of last quarter of 2024 tell us?
Remember, their 13F's report their activity a quarter in arrears, meaning what they released in February was their activity between October and December of 2024? Did they do more buying or selling? We're going to look at Warren Buffett, Terry Smith, Bill Ackman, and Chuck Akre, all of whom have investing traits I admire and attempt to adhere to.
But while we look at their activity, I think the much more interesting quarter will be what they do in the one we are in now, Q1 of 2025. Q4 2024 and Q1 2025 taken together can reveal much to us small investors what the mindset is of the best of the best. So, we're going to start with Warren Buffett's portfolio.
Of course, the news focused on selling out of those two S&P 500 ETFs. But to me, that's not the real story at all. The first thing you notice here is he still has Apple as the largest holding in his portfolio at 28% of his portfolio. But he didn't do anything with Apple in this quarter. That's notable because the last two quarters, he has sold off a very large position of his Apple holdings.
And of course, everybody said that Apple was done, Warren Buffett was getting rid of it. But it now appears he looks to be trimming that holding to beef up his cash position, possibly preparing for what he foresees as the market reset. Of course, Buffett's not one to time the market. However, he's been around long enough to understand when certain economic conditions present themselves to a certain market going up or down.
When we look at the activity, though, what are we looking at with those two S&P 500 ETFs, SPY and VOO? They make up 0.01% of his entire portfolio. The media was freaking out over for what is Buffett's pennies. These were never large holdings for him, ever, at any point in his portfolio. So again, it's another case of the media focusing on the noise and not really looking at what's important at all.
But what is important, aside from what I mentioned with Apple, is this other notable sells here. Bank of America, he reduced that position by 14%. Capital One Financial, he reduced that position by 18%. New holdings, he reduced that position by 53%. Citigroup, which he reduced by 73%. What do all of these have in common?
They're banks. And Buffett has been very critical of the banks in the last few years. It's going to be interesting to see what he says at the annual Berkshire Hathaway Investors Meeting in May. But he made no secret of the disdain he had for banks at last year's meeting, and he's acting on that disdain by selling large portions of his bank holdings.
A few notable adds he really ends increasing his position in Domino's Pizza, and he added more Poolcorp. Two new buys from Q3 of 2024, and he's beefing up these positions in Q4. But Buffett's moves are telegraphing more what he believes about banking in general, which could portend some negative things for the economy considering how important the banking sector is in the United States.
Next, we're looking at Terry Smith of Fundsmith, and he has reduced virtually every single one of the top half of his holdings here. He reduced Meta, Microsoft, ADP, Visa, selling out a whole lot of these positions. Now, I had mentioned earlier that I believe that valuations were stretched. Apparently, Terry Smith thinks the same thing as he has reduced pretty much everything.
Either he believes that the market has neared its top and he's taking some profits while he can, or he's selling to beef up for some potential buys down the road of some stocks that may be new to his portfolio when the Q1 13Fs are released. Either way, Terry Smith does have a very attractive portfolio.
He has a lot of holdings that I personally have in my portfolio, such as Microsoft, Visa, Fortinet, and way down here MSCI. He did make two buys in this quarter, two very small opening positions in Medpace Holdings and Doximity. But Terry Smith continues the trend that we saw with Buffett of selling out of many stocks in his portfolio.
Next, we move on to Bill Ackman. Bill Ackman is much more of an activist investor instead of a very long-term buy and hold investor. And his moves are certainly reflecting that. He added more to Brookfield Corp, which was a new position for him a couple quarters ago. And the thing about Bill Ackman, when he starts buying heavy into any particular stock, you know that managerial change is not far behind.
Now, Brookfield did have a board of directors shake-up in January, but I don't think Bill Ackman had a hand in that. The chairman of the board, Mark Carney, resigned to announce his candidacy for the Liberal Party of Canada. And he also has made a significant reduction in his Chipotle holdings, reducing that by 14%.
He has been a long-time activist investor in Chipotle, was instrumental in turning Chipotle around after their food poisoning scandal. But perhaps he's trimming because he is moving on to more fertile pastures such as Nike, which he continues to add to that position. Nike has been struggling over the last couple years in the market.
So, it'll be interesting to see what, if any, activism Bill Ackman performs with Nike. But what's more intriguing about Bill Ackman isn't so much what he's done with his portfolio in this past quarter. It's an announcement he made a couple weeks ago regarding what he wants to do with Howard Hughes Holding.
He seeks to turn Howard Hughes Holdings into a modern-day Berkshire. He gave a lengthy presentation on just that. It was an interesting listen. I still want to research a little bit more about what he's doing with it. He's seeking to increase his position in Howard Hughes from 37.6% to 48% in a $900 million takeover bid.
The grand plan is to turn it into a holding company, very similar to how Berkshire Hathaway operates. There are some differences, notably in the management fee structure, which many investors on the call asked him about. But essentially he wants to make available but he wants to make available Pershing Square Capital's resources to Howard Hughes and start buying up assets much in the same vein as Berkshire.
This is a whole 'nother discussion for another video. It is an intriguing prospect, but I do want to go over it in more detail later. And finally, we have Chuck Akre at Akre Capital Management, a very solid portfolio in my opinion. Every business here is high quality, top-notch. And another theme emerges that we saw with Terry Smith and Warren Buffett.
Major reductions in his positions and not buying as well. He sold MasterCard. He sold Moody's, O'Reilly Automotive, American Tower. It appears all of these investors are beefing up the cash that they have cuz they're not buying. At least they didn't buy in the Q4. Perhaps they're going to be buying a lot more in Q1.
And that's why I said at the outset of the video, it's going to be far more interesting to see what the 13Fs for Q1 look like to see if any of these super investors are making major purchases now that we're going through a market correction. A market correction, I might add, that doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon.
So the theme emerging among the quality investors that I like to follow are a lot of selling and not a lot of buying. Given their vast experience in the investing world over the many years, they perhaps can see some of the signs of a market correction coming. Maybe they're selling to take some profits, moving into cash to kind of wait to see what sort of deals come available over the next days and weeks, but nonetheless, they all sold in Q4 of 2024.
So, that wraps up the discussion of the super investors. It'll be interesting, like I said, to see what they do in Q1 of 2025. But for now, the market is on a bit of a sale. So, I think it would be fun to see what we can buy over the next few weeks. Thank you for watching today's video. And if you've made it this far, go ahead and subscribe to the channel. Thank you, and happy investing.
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