Berkshire Cuts Apple Stake by Almost Half in Selling Spree
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Perhaps he's being prepared just in case cash is hard to come by in the next few years.
It also hasn't escaped my notice that interest rates are high, so sitting on cash is an okay place to be.
Or maybe he has an eye on a big purchase or two.
Obviously it's up to them. But to me there's a little temptation that if you're going to be this kind of 'pocket universe economy' for lack of a better term that it tries to be a little less straight beta.
I don't want to open it up and see "hey 20% of your maket cap is just apple? I already have a lot of that, can't you have something else?". Which firmly falls into the camp of not their problem.
So I guess now it's only 10% of its market cap, so progress :)
It could be he thinks this is as good as it's going to get for a while, don't know.
At this point I usually look at the cash as being as much directly insurance related as it is business/investing related. They are a massive insurance and reinsurance writer.
This is likely true of much of the tech industry.
Looking at the article he's probably feeling that things are overvalued in general and is building a war-chest to scoop up stocks at a discount after a slump or crash.
This isn't taking money/cash out of Apple -- Apple's cash is entirely unaffected.
This is just Berkshire selling some of their shares of Apple to other people who now own those same shares insteads. All the money Berkshire gets in these sales comes from the buyers, not from Apple.
The current stock price is after the sales, but before the news of the sales. Any reaction now would be a reaction to the news and not the effects of the sale itself.
If Berkshire sold all, or nearly all, of their Apple stock, then that would mean they thought Apple was overvalued, and so best to cash out now.
But selling half means you're still keeping half. Which is just rebalancing, wanting to diversify.