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Warren Buffett did something curious with his Apple stock holding

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Warren Buffett speaks during the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on May 4, 2024. 

CNBC

A coincidence or master plan? Warren Buffett now owns the exact same number of shares of Apple as he does Coca-Cola after slashing the tech holding by half.

Many Buffett followers made the curious observation after a regulatory “13-F” filing Wednesday night revealed Berkshire Hathaway‘s equity holdings at the end of the second quarter. It showed an identical 400 million share count in Apple and Coca-Cola, Buffett’s oldest and longest stock position.

It’s prompted some to believe that the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ is done selling down his stake in the iPhone maker.

“If Buffett likes round numbers, he may not be planning to sell any additional shares of Apple,” said David Kass, a finance professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “Just as Coca-Cola is a ‘permanent’ holding for Buffett, so may be Apple.”

The 93-year-old legendary investor first bought 14,172,500 shares of Coca-Cola in 1988 and increased his stake over the next few years to 100 million shares by 1994. So the investor has kept his Coca-Cola stake steady at essentially the same round-number share count for 30 years.

Due to two rounds of 2-for-1 stock splits in 2006 and 2012, Berkshire’s Coca-Cola holding became 400 million shares.

Buffett said he discovered the iconic soft drink when he was only 6 years old. In 1936, Buffett started buying Cokes six at a time for 25 cents each from his family grocery store to sell around the neighborhood for five cents more. Buffett said it was then he realized the “extraordinary consumer attractiveness and commercial possibilities of the product.”

Slashing Apple stake

Investing in tech high-flyers such as Apple appears to defy Buffett’s long-held value investing principles, but the famed investor has treated it as a consumer products company like Coca-Cola rather than a technology investment.

Buffett has touted the loyal customer base of the iPhone, saying people would give up their cars before they give up their smartphones. He even called Apple the second-most important business after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers.

So it was shocking to some when it was revealed that Berkshire dumped more than 49% of its stake in the iPhone maker in the second quarter.

Many suspected that it was part of portfolio management or a bigger overall market view, and not a judgement on the future prospects of Apple. The sale brought down Apple’s weighting in Berkshire’s portfolio to about 30% from almost 50% at the end of last year.

And with it settled at this round number, it appears to be in a spot that Buffett favors for his most cherished and longest-held equities.

Still, some said it could just be a pure coincidence.

“I don’t think Buffett thinks that way,” said Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust Company and a Berkshire shareholder.

But at Berkshire’s annual meeting in May, Buffett did compare the two and reference the holding period for both was unlimited.

“We own Coca-Cola, which is a wonderful business,” Buffett said. “And we own Apple, which is an even better business, and we will own, unless something really extraordinary happens, we will own Apple and American Express and Coca-Cola.”

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China’s response to U.S. tariffs will likely focus on stimulus, trade

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Chinese national flags flutter on boats near shipping containers at the Yangshan Port outside Shanghai, China, February 7, 2025. 

Go Nakamura | Reuters

BEIJING — China’s reaction to new U.S. tariffs will likely focus on domestic stimulus and strengthening ties with trading partners, according to analysts based in Greater China.

Hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced additional 34% tariffs on China, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce called on the U.S. to cancel the tariffs, and vowed unspecified countermeasures. The sweeping U.S. policy also slapped new duties on the European Union and major Asian countries.

Chinese exports to the U.S. this year had already been hit by 20% in additional tariffs, raising the total rate on shipments from China to 54%, among the highest levied by the Trump administration. The effective rate for individual product lines can vary.

But, as has been the case, the closing line of the Chinese statement was a call to negotiate.

“I think the focus of China’s response in the near term won’t be retaliatory tariffs or such measures,” said Bruce Pang, adjunct associate professor at CUHK Business School. That’s according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese-language statement.

Instead, Pang expects China to focus on improving its own economy by diversifying export destinations and products, as well as doubling down on its priority of boosting domestic consumption.

Watch for cascading tariffs as tariffs reroute trade within Asia, says economist

China, the world’s second-largest economy, has since September stepped up stimulus efforts by expanding the fiscal deficit, increasing a consumption trade-in subsidy program and calling for a halt in the real estate slump. Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a rare meeting with tech entrepreneurs including Alibaba founder Jack Ma in February, in a show of support for the private sector.

The policy reversal — from regulatory tightening in recent years — reflects how Beijing has been “anticipating the coming slowdown or even crash in exports,” Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu said in a report, ahead of Trump’s latest tariff announcement. He pointed out that the pandemic-induced export boom of 2021 enabled Beijing to “launch a massive regulatory campaign.”

“My view stays the same,” Hu said in an email Thursday. “Beijing will use domestic stimulus to offset the impact of tariffs, so that they could still achieve the growth target of ‘around 5%.'”

Instead of retaliatory tariffs, Hu also expects Beijing will focus on still using blacklists, export controls on critical minerals and probes into foreign companies in China. Hu also anticipates China will keep the yuan strong against the U.S. dollar and resist calls from retailers to cut prices — as a way to push inflationary pressure onto the U.S.

China’s top leaders in early March announced they would pursue a target of around 5% growth in gross domestic product this year, a task they emphasized would require “very arduous work” to achieve. The finance ministry also hinted it could increase fiscal support if needed.

About 20% of China’s economy relies on exports, according to Goldman Sachs. They previously estimated that new U.S. tariffs of around 60% on China would lower real GDP by around 2 percentage points. The firm still maintains a full-year forecast of 4.5% GDP growth.

Changing global trade

What’s different from the impact of tariffs under Trump’s first term is that China is not the only target, but one of a swath of countries facing hefty levies on their exports to the U.S. Some of these countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, had served as alternate routes for Chinese goods to reach the U.S.

At the Chinese export hub of Yiwu on Thursday, businesses seemed nonchalant about the impact of the new U.S. tariffs, due to a perception their overseas competitors wouldn’t gain an advantage, said Cameron Johnson, a Shanghai-based senior partner at consulting firm Tidalwave Solutions.

He pointed out that previously, the U.S. had focused its trade measures on forcing companies to remove China from their supply chains and go to other countries. But Chinese manufacturers had expanded overseas alongside that diversification, he said.

“The reality is this [new U.S. tariff policy] essentially gives most of Asia and Africa to China, and the U.S. is not prepared,” Johnson said. He expects China won’t make things unnecessarily difficult for U.S. businesses operating in the country and instead will try harder to build other trade relationships.

Since Trump’s first four-year term ended in early 2021, China has increased its trade with Southeast Asia so much that the region is now Beijing’s largest trading partner, followed by the European Union and then the U.S.

The 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) joined China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand in forming the world’s largest free trade bloc — the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) — which came into being in early 2022. The U.S. and India are not members of the RCEP.

“RCEP member countries will naturally deepen trade ties with one another,” Yue Su, principal economist, China, at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said in a note Thursday.

“This is also partly because China’s economy is likely to remain the most — or at least among the most—stable in relative terms, given the government’s strong commitment to its growth targets and its readiness to deploy fiscal policy measures when needed,” she said.

Uncertainties remain

The extent to which all countries will be slapped with tariffs this week remains uncertain as Trump is widely expected to use the duties as a negotiating tactic, especially with China.

He said last week the U.S. could lower its tariffs on China to help close a deal for Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations.

But the level of new tariffs on China was worse than many investors expected.

“Unlike some of the optimistic market forecasts, we do not expect a US-China bilateral grand bargain,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said in a note Thursday.

“We expect tensions between these two mega economies to worsen significantly,” he said, “especially as China has been making large strides in high-tech sectors, including AI and robotics.”

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: LULU, NKE, TSLA, NVDA

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