Thursday, November 10, 2011

Buffett Is Buying

At least one prominent investor took advantage of the disastrous third quarter to buy cheaply priced stocks: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway invested $23.9 billion - $7 billion of it into equities - in that quarter alone. That's the most Buffett has invested in any quarter in at least 15 years.

That $7 billion investment in stocks for the third quarter was up from $3.62 billion in the second quarter and a paltry $834 million in the first quarter. Although the specific list of stocks Berkshire Hathaway bought in the third quarter hasn't been released, we do know that the firm's position in banks, insurance and finance stocks rose 2.7 percent over the quarter, while its position in consumer stocks dropped by 5 percent.

The last quarter in which Buffett's firm invested more than $20 billion was the fourth quarter of 2008. That bet may have been slightly premature, but it eventually paid off: The S&P 500, you'll remember, bottomed out in the first quarter of 2009 before coming back strong.

No comments:

Post a Comment