Even investment gurus make mistakes. Warren Buffett knows this well, and in recent days he has experienced firsthand what it means to get the timing of the sale wrong. In this particular case, the mistake was made with Apple, the stock that represents the largest investment in the portfolio of its investment holding, Berkshire Hathaway.
What happened
But let’s take a step back. There Berkshire Hathaway announced in the first quarter of 2024 that it reduced its position in the California giant by 115 million shares of Apple. equal to 13% of the total exposure. The move followed the sale of 10 million shares in the latter part of 2023.
In total, Buffett’s conglomerate disposed of 125 million Apple shares between late 2023 and early 2024.
The sale, however, appears to have been mistimed. Yesterday, Apple shares returned to the top of the class with a capitalization of more than 3300 billion and a value of 217 dollars, after the disclosure of the artificial intelligence strategy.
But how much did Buffett lose selling Apple stock before the boom in the last few sessions? Given that the average sale price is not known, as explained by Il Sole 24 Ore, which did the calculations, but given that between September 2023 and March 2024, Apple shares hovered around $180, the current For $217, yes, you can roughly calculate. 5 billion dollars loss.
We recall that Buffett explained that the decision to sell shares was in line with a strategy of increasing liquidity and diversifying investments at a historic time of high interest rates and extremely high stock prices.
Apple is back on top as the company with the largest capitalization
after Statement of Agreement with OpenAi and related developments in artificial intelligence, Apple shares have surged +12% in the past two sessions, renewing all-time highs and reclaiming its crown as the world’s most capitalized company. At the moment, Apple’s wealth is 3256 billion dollars, followed by Microsoft (about 3249 billion). In third place is Nvidia (3100 billion), which it had even a few days ago Apple dropped to third place.
Come spy Gabriel Debach, market analyst at eToro:
“The dynamic technology sector is witnessing vigorous competition for places at the top of the market capitalization. While Apple recently lost second place to Nvidia, the Cupertino company even briefly regained the top spot on Wednesday, temporarily overtaking Microsoft to become the world’s largest company by market capitalization. This is despite Apple having the lowest forward price-to-earnings (P/E) valuation of the three and despite posting the lowest revenue and earnings growth over the past twelve months. In particular, Apple’s turnover decreased by 0.9%, and profit growth stopped at 6.43%.
