Buffett is all about buying stocks that are cheap and keeping them for the long haul.

This investment strategy has made him one of the world’s richest men.  

What does his stock portfolio look like right now?

The good news is that you can easily look that up on various websites (I’ll tell you how below).

The bad news is that not all the stock picks are his.

He has two apprentices – Ted and Todd – working for him, and they both have double digit billion portfolios to manage themselves. Sounds like a lot of money, right? But that’s peanuts in Buffett’s world. He has close to 150 billion waiting in cash right now, ready to be invested in what he calls “an elephant size” acquisition.

Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway has stocks in 49 different publicly traded companies (plus 63 wholly owned subsidiaries).

It’s safe to assume that the top seven are his own investments.

Here they are:  

1. Apple 

Warren Buffett has been being Apple shares since 2016. The stock price has tripled since then.

He owns almost a billion shares that, at the time of writing, are traded at 117 USD per share.

That means his slice of Apple is worth more than 100 billion dollars.

That’s really a lot of money, and it makes Apple one of his biggest investments.

Apple makes up almost 50 percent of the value of all the stocks and shares that Berkshire Hathaway owns in publicly traded companies. 

2. Bank of America

Bank of America is a very interesting company on the list.

While Buffett seems to be selling most other banks and financial services since the COVID-19 dip in March, he is very actively buying up shares in Bank of America. 

His actions seem to be telling us that Bank of America is his bet for the future.

He has more than a billion shares, and they account for more than 9 percent of Berkshire’s portfolio of publicly traded companies. 

3. Coca-Cola  

Coca-Cola is one of Warren Buffett’s most notorious investments, and it goes a long time back.

He first invested in the soft drinks company in 1988 when the share price was depressed due to the flopped innovation called “New Coke”. At the time, Coca-Cola felt threatened by Pepsi’s sweet version of a coke, and they remade their own soft drink into a more sugary version too, but customers disliked it.

They had to go back to the original Coke after a while. 

Warren Buffett’s investment in Coca-Cola was a massive bet at the time. He bought 24 million shares worth 1.8 billion dollars – and he wasn’t as big as he is now. Berkshire’s book value at the time (1989) was 4.9 billion.

Would you bet around 20 percent of your wealth on one single company? It says a lot about how bold an investor he really is.

Today, Coca-Cola makes up almost 9 percent of Berkshire’s portfolio of publicly traded stocks.

4. American Express 

Warren Buffett first invested in American Express after the so-called Salad-oil scandal in 1964 that made all financial stocks fall rapidly. 

American Express fell with the market, and after a drop of around 50 percent, Warren Buffett stepped in and bought shares.

He has invested in American Express many times after that.

Today, American Express represents 7 percent of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of publicly traded stocks. 

5. Kraft-Heinz   

Warrren Buffett has very publicly said that he is happy with Heinz but paid too much for the Kraft part of the consumer product giant – and that he would have sold it if he could. 

Obviously, he couldn’t. It’s still on the list and makes up for around 4 percent of the stock portfolio.

6. Moody’s    

Moody was originally a spin-off of another investment he had (Dun & Bradstreet – he has since sold that). 

After the financial crisis, he sold some of the shares, maybe because Moody’s was criticized for being too generous with their ratings and indirectly having contributed to creating the housing bubble that preceded the financial crisis.

Today, Moody’s totals 3 percent of Berkshire’s portfolio of publicly traded companies. 

7. U.S. Bancorp    

Warren Buffett has invested in U.S. Bancorp for many years, but after the COVID-19 dip in March, he has sold off slices of it together with many other banks. He has, for example, completely exited Goldman Sachs – as well as all the airline companies he had stocks in. 

Today, U.S. Bancorp amounts to 2 percent of Berkshire’s portfolio of publicly traded companies. 

All the Others

Berkshire Hathaway owns shares in 49 publicly traded companies, but many of the other positions are investments that Ted and Todd have made.

Ted Weschler and Todd Combs have a completely different investing style from Warren Buffett. They invest in things that he has always avoided, like pharmaceuticals, IPOs and fintech. 

Berkshire Hathaway also has 63 fully owned subsidiaries, such as the insurance company Geico, the sports label Brooks, the battery producer Duracell, and the chocolate factory See’s Candies.

How to Look Up Buffett’s Stock Portfolio

The original source is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website SEC.Org. You’ll get the most reliable data from their site.

The problem with SEC’s site is that it’s not very user-friendly. It will only give you a status update of what Berkshire has stocks in – not what they sold or bought in the last quarter. That means you have to compare data quarter by quarter to figure out what is going on. Also remember, you can only search by company – not the investor’s name. 

There are other websites that make SEC’s data more accessible. They are GuruFocus.com, Dataroma.com, and WhaleWisdom. On these websites, they’ll show you the development and let you search by the investor’s name. 

Don’t forget the e-book Free Yourself.  It’ll teach you how to calculate how much a company is worth. You can get it for free here. 

The Me Too movement has swept across many countries and industries.

It has helped put an end to serial offenders, which is good, but there’s still a long road ahead to fight gender inequality in general.

We need a second movement to overcome gender inequality and break the glass ceiling.

The good news is that you can do this with stocks.

How, you might ask?

No worries. As usual, I’ve got you covered with specific steps you can follow.

1. Invest in Stocks

Many studies show that women shy away from the stock market and invest far less frequently than men.

The sad consequence of this is that many women miss out on growth and profit, and this deepens the financial divide between men and women.

If your finances are not strong (if you’re dependent on a monthly salary), you’re less likely to stand up to unreasonable treatment at work.

If, on the other hand, you are financially independent and don’t really need the salary, you’ve got the opportunity to make some bold career moves. 

2. Only Invest in Companies with Women at the Top

If they don’t have any women on the board and in top management, don’t invest in the company. 

The same goes for companies with only a few women in upper management. Where’s the limit?

You have to use some common sense. If there are only two women at the top and if those two are in charge of “soft” areas like HR or communications, it’s a sign that the company doesn’t take gender equality seriously. Someone in charge of HR or communications doesn’t have a say in big decisions.

Vote with your money and tell the public companies that you, as a female investor, no longer accept a world where women are excluded from power.

3. Only Invest in Companies with a Fair Gender Policy 

If they don’t mention diversity in their annual report, then you can rest assured that they don’t have any strategy or policy or goals to fight inequality. 

Let’s take an example from politics. How can you expect a political party to prioritize the environment if they don’t have any environmental policy written down? It’s a sure sign that it’s not a priority. They’ll the environment deteriorate if they reach power.

The same goes for companies. If there is no written plan, they don’t have one.

4. Engage and Use Your Voting Rights 

When you own stocks, you own the company, and you have power.

You have voting rights at the annual meeting. You can suggest things to be changed. You can ask critical questions.

In today’s world, many stockholders have the feeling that the CEO is in charge. When you listen to reporting calls, you often get the feeling that the CEO is the strict teacher and the shareholders the unruly students with silly questions.

The truth is that the CEO and the rest of the management work for the shareholders. They are hired to do the work that the shareholders – the owners – ask them to do. So the real boss is actually the owners of the business. It’s you, the shareholder. 

Use your power actively to make sure that women are treated well. Make suggestions, ask critical questions, and vote. 

The link between management and the shareholders is the board. The board is there to ensure that the company is run in the interest of the shareholders.

You, dear reader and shareholder, can run for a place on the board.

Many boards lack women – about half of the boards in my country (Denmark) have no women on them.

All-men boards are true catastrophes.

The tone is set in the board and trickles down through the company. If it’s okay to exclude women on the board, it sends a signal that it’s okay to exclude women further down the chain of command.

It sends the signal that women are not equals. 

5. Put Your Foot Down at Work 

I’ve ignored a lot of injustices because I was afraid of looking like a troublemaker and afraid of losing my job and my income.

I’ve discovered that my male counterpart was paid much more than me (the two of us were doing the exact same job, and I had more experience).

I’ve accepted that there was a whole layer of managers above me that consisted entirely of men.

I’ve accepted being demoted as some sort of absurd carrot and stick punishment for applying for another job internally in another department – and I kept quiet. 

Did not speaking up protect me?

No – in the end, I was fired while on maternity leave. 

I wish I could do it all over again and act differently. I wish I had spoken up. I wish I had resigned and had resumed my career somewhere else where women were valued. Not speaking up gave my boss the impression that this behavior was okay and that he could get away with it.

We all – men and women – have a moral imperative to speak up and be willing to risk our job.

Not just for ourselves, but for all the other men and women next to us and for all the men and women after us. We do it for ourselves, but also for our sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons.

We have to create pressure from both within the company as employees and from outside as shareholders and owners of the companies if we want things to change. 

Don’t forget to read my free e-book that explains my whole investing process – including my favorite way to calculate what a company is worth. You can get it here.

Buffett became a billionaire by investing in stocks, and his method is simple. It’s about buying stocks that are cheap. 

Yes, thanks, that sounds easy… But stocks in which kinds of companies? What are the criteria for selecting them? What are the rules?

Here are the investing principles boiled down to five simple rules. 

Rule number 1: The Company Must Be Stable

Both revenue and profit should be steadily rising. 

This sounds obvious – but a lot of private investors already err here.

They buy stocks in the latest fad, maybe an IPO or a biotech company, without checking whether the company makes a profit. Or they might buy shares in something that they really like or even fall head-over-heels in love with, like Tesla (“what a nice car, and it’s good for the environment!”) without realizing that it’s running on a deficit (Yes, Tesla is losing money). 

If there’s no profit, there’s no stability. It’s hard to predict the future, and that makes it hard to assess the value of the company.

Rule Number 2: The Company Must Sell Something You Understand

Buffett says you must invest within your field of competence. This means you need to understand whatever service or product the firm sells. 

Lets use the biotech example again. Very few investors really understand what a biotech company is trying to develop. It’s too complicated even for the specialists; if you’re a scientist, you have no real knowledge of the trials within the company.

This means you have no idea what a future product would look like or whether it might be better than a competitors, because it doesn’t even exist yet.

Rule Number 3: The Company Must Have a Future 

You should be very sure that the company will be bigger in 10 years. How can you be sure of that? 

You can be fairly certain that the company will grow if it’s protected by competitive advantages like economies of scale, switching costs, toll bridge, patents or secrets. If you want to know more about competitive advantages, you can read  my free e-book here.

Is that the case in a biotech company? Can you be sure that they will be bigger in 10 years? If they haven’t developed any products yet, you have no idea whether they’ll even exist in 10 years.

Rule Number 4: The CEO Must Be Trustworthy and Competent

How do you know if the management is trustworthy and competent?

When it comes to trust, you have to use your social skills – just like you would use them when meeting people in real life. Watch videos, read interviews and, if you can, meet them in person. Trust your gut feeling.

When it comes to competence, look at the numbers. By numbers I don’t mean the stock price. I mean the company’s annual and quarterly reports and its track record. If the manager is new to the job, go back to his previous job and look at the numbers. What numbers, you might ask:

Apart from growing revenues and profits, here are some specific things you should notice:

• Are they buying back shares when the stock is cheap or expensive?
• What’s the level of compensation? Is it at a fair level?
• How high is long-term debt? Can they pay it back within a few years with free cash flow?

Rule Number 5: The Company Must Be on Sale  

You must buy shares when the company is on sale. Even the most wonderful company can be a lousy investment if you buy the shares too expensive. 

Buffett says that it’s like buying 1 dollar for 50 cents and that only some people get it. If someone doesn’t get it right away, you’ll never be able to explain it to them. 

Do you get the concept that because the stock market is not efficient, you can buy stocks for less than they are worth?

It’s really worth exploring, because knowing how to spot cheap stocks can make you super rich.

Don’t forget the e-book Free Yourself.  It’ll teach you how to calculate how much a company is worth. You cane get it for free here. 

“What stocks should I invest in?”

You’ve probably asked this question many times.

Maybe you’ve even googled it in frustration. But there’s another question you should ask (or google) first, and that’s:

“What should I avoid investing in?”

There are two reasons why this should be your first question:

1. It’s going to take you a long time to play catch-up if you lose money.

2. It’ll be easier for you to find good investments if you have a system for discarding the bad ones first. You can waste a lot of time researching a company just to discover at a later stage that it’s a no-go because of one of the 10 reasons I’m going to list.

Are you ready to discover what you should avoid?

1. Companies You Don’t Understand

Don’t invest in something you don’t understand.

It’s really important that you have a good grasp of the product or the service that the company delivers. If you don’t, you can’t know whether it’s really a wonderful company with solid products that will sell more in 10 years.

You’ll make yourself vulnerable to fraudulent companies because, without you following along, the management can create fiction about how it’s going. 

2. Companies with Bad Management 

Invest in companies that are run by trustworthy and competent people.

But what is good and what is bad management?

You have to use your ability to read people and ask yourself whether you trust the management. Look at the results they’ve created. Watch videos and interviews with the CEO.

Look at body language and facial expressions and notice how he or she responds to criticism.

One important sign of honest management is that you actually understand what they’re saying. Some technocrats hide behind industry jargon, and that’s usually a red flag.   

3. New Companies and IPOs  

You need at least 10 years of annual reports to be able to paint a fair picture of the company.

You’re trying to predict how the company will do in around 10 years. You can’t do that based on a startup’s initial years. 

Companies that are going public, called IPOs (Initial Public Offering), are risky for two reasons:

• They go public with a big sales team behind them that can hype the stock price.
• IPOs often happen in times of an overvalued stock market where the price is more beneficial to the original owners than the new shareholders. 

4. Companies That Lose Money 

Stay away if the company doesn’t make money.

It’s not a good investment to become an owner of a business that spends more money than it makes.

Just like – from a financial standpoint – it’s not a good idea to marry someone who buys a jet on a teacher’s salary.

If they operate with a deficit, they have a hole in the bucket where the water is running out.

5. Companies That Are Shrinking 

If the sales are declining, stay away (even if they’re making money). It’s not a good sign.

They could be losing customers for three reasons:

A. They are losing market shares to competitors.

B. The whole market is disappearing, maybe because something better was invented.

C. They are going through some kind of event that could be overcome.

The first two reasons are a no-go.

If C’s the case, you should not have more than a few months of declining sales and you should be able to identify the exact reason why it’s happening and how they are addressing it.

6. Small Companies 

Don’t invest in something that has a market capitalization (market cap) of less than 1 billion USD. 

What’s market cap? It’s what the company is worth at this very moment (number of shares X stock price). You can easily find it by googling “market cap”.

If you invest in small companies, you run the risk of the stocks freezing up and you not being able to unload the shares when you want to get out.

7. Companies in Developing Countries

There’s a lot of trust involved in investing. You have to trust the government, the laws, the institutions enforcing the laws and the whole support structure surrounding the company, like the accountants doing the books.

In other words, if it’s a US company you invest in, you trust the US Government, the relevant US laws, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the accounting firm they use.

I don’t invest in Chinese companies for this very reason. I don’t feel sure about the government’s predictability, the regulation (China has, among others, inadequate regulation on insider trading), the enforcement or the accounting practice.   

8. Companies with Variable Results

If the numbers go up and down a lot, stay away from investing in the company.

Why?

It’s hard to calculate what the company is worth because there will be no “normal” year you can base it on.

Some industries have inherently fluctuating results, because one single order is the size of a whale. That’s the case with companies that produce wind turbines. An order is usually not a single wind turbine but rather whole parks.

It’s hard to predict anything in this kind of company.

9. Pharmaceuticals and Biotech Companies      

Pharmaceuticals and biotech companies run a lot of complicated research projects to develop new medicine.

What happens in the laboratory can have an enormous influence on both the future sales prospects and the stock price today. 

It’s hard to predict, and it’s hard to understand. There can be “bombs” in both the pipelines of the company you are looking to invest in – and also its competitors.

If a development project in your company of choice tanks, the future tanks. If a competitor’s development project has a breakthrough, the future of your company of choice tanks too.

10. Financial Companies 

Yes, Warren Buffett invests in banks and insurance companies, but that doesn’t mean you should.

Financial companies are complex. Banks can have a lot of nasty stuff hidden deep inside their books.

Maybe they are vulnerable due to certain loans they’ve made or maybe they are invested in some complicated products that they don’t really understand themselves (think Financial Crisis).

Both banks’ and insurance companies’ annual reports deviate from a normal company’s annual report. You’ll find that it’s difficult to do some of the most popular calculations on them, like Warren Buffett’s owner earnings.  

What Else to Avoid?

Obviously, having this list doesn’t mean you can invest in anything that’s not on here.

This list is just the first strainer you’ll use.

Next, you’ll use a check list to find a great company. You are welcome to borrow mine here.  

Don’t forget to read my free e-book that explains my whole investing process – including my favorite way to calculate what a company is worth. You can get it here.