5 Stock Buys And Sells From Top Billionaire Investors

Warren Buffett takes a slice of Domino’s. Ken Griffin, David Tepper and Steve Cohen are shedding Amazon shares. Here’s what SEC filings reveal about recent moves of the world’s richest and most successful investors.

By John Dobosz, Forbes Staff

Over the past 30 months, the reported moves of billionaire investors were a major consideration in the strategies we have used to construct our two Forbes Billionaire Investor model portfolios, but they were not the only factor. We also sought out stocks that had compelling value appeal with low debt levels and strong business fundamentals, which means stocks trading at depressed valuations that still produce rising revenues and profits. Except for Walt Disney (DIS), which had exceptional interest from activist billionaire investors, we’ve required our stocks to pay dividends. We also wanted to see evidence of recent insider buying among company managers and directors.

The strategy has yielded great success. When we launched Forbes Billionaire Investor in September 2022, we bought large-cap future home runs like retail success stories Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS +118%) and Ross Stores (ROST +90%), as well as “Magnificent Seven” member Microsoft (MSFT +84%). Among small- and mid-caps we had F&G Annuities & Life (FG +176%), lighting specialist Acuity Brands (AYI +99%), midstream oil and gas MLP Antero Midstream (AM +97%) and mortgage insurer Radian Group (RDN +96%).

Monitoring Moves Of Billionaire Investors

Since 1934, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has required investment managers who exercise discretion over at least $100 million worth of assets to report their holdings on a quarterly basis via form 13F. These publicly available documents provide individual investors with a detailed look into the portfolio moves of hedge funds, private equity and other investment funds, but the information arrives with significant delays. Investment managers do not need to report their buys and sells until 45 days after the end of the financial quarter in which they were made.

Especially for algorithmic and trading-oriented managers, quants like Ken Griffin of Citadel, Jeffrey Yass of Susquehanna International Group and Israel Englander of Millennium Management, if you were to buy every stock that superstar investors reported in their 13F filings, you could be buying many stocks that they have already sold. Holding periods tend to be longer for value style billionaires like Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway and David Tepper of Apaloosa Management, who seek out long-term ownership, and for activist investors like Carl Icahn who tend to hold a stock long enough to shake up management teams and companies’ boards of directors.

Despite the lag times built into reporting requirements, 13F filings do provide small investors opportunities to identify areas of agreement among investment managers, and they do help you discern rising or falling ownership trends of specific managers. Moves into or out of particular sectors and industry groups become apparent, as do instances of investment conviction in single stocks. For example, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway just reported buying a $600 million stake in Domino’s Pizza (DPZ).

Buffett grabbing a slice of the Domino’s pie is one of 25 interesting insights gleaned from looking at the five biggest buys and five biggest sells of the five wealthiest self-made billionaire investors, according to Forbes. With a personal fortune of $147 billion, Buffett is by far the wealthiest, more than triple the net worth of his closest rival, Susquehanna founder Jeffrey Yass, worth nearly $50 billion.

Presented below are the largest dollar-volume buys and sells of the world’s wealthiest investment managers taken from their most recent SEC filings.

Warren Buffett

Estimated net worth: $147 billion | Berkshire Hathaway

🟢 BUYS

Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI)

Domino’s Pizza (DPZ)

Occidental Petroleum (OXY)

Chubb Ltd. (CB)

Heico (HEI)

🔴 SELLS

Apple (AAPL)

Bank Of America (BAC)

Snowflake (SNOW)

Chevron (CVX)

Capital One Financial (COF)

From our perspective, it was most encouraging to see Berkshire initiating a $225 million stake in October’s large-cap buy, aerospace and defense supplier Heico (HEI), based in Hollywood, Fla. Buffett joins eight other billionaires in Heico, the largest stake held by Florida billionaire optometrist and inventor Herbert Wertheim, who owns 7.5% of Heico’s outstanding shares. Buffett continues to slash his ownership of Apple and Bank of America although both stocks still represent Berkshire Hathaway’s first and third largest holdings, accounting for a respective 23% and 12% of its investment portfolio.