The Smart Money Just Made Some Big Moves.

0:00 As a lot of you guys know, one of the things I like to do here on the channel is keep tabs on the 13F filings of the best investors in the world. These are quarterly SEC filings that big money managers have to submit that show their stock holdings. It's kind of like an investing cheat code. Every 3 months you get to see what the world's best investors have been buying and selling. And recently they have been very busy with some very notable names making some very big bets on some very notable companies. So, in this video, I'm going to take you through all the biggest moves I think you should know from the most recent 13F filings. And we start with the granddaddy himself, Mr. Warren Buffett. Now, one of the most notable stories around Warren Buffett over the past year and a half has been his sellown of the Apple position, which

0:46 really started in Q1 of 2024. Over the next three quarters, Buffett went on to sell over 605 million Apple shares, 2/3 of his position, reducing Apple's weight in the Berkshire portfolio from 50% to just 25%. Now, after this, he had left himself with an even 300 million shares. And the next few quarters showed no further reduction. So, we all thought that Buffett was done, right? Well, turns out that might not be the case. as in his most recent 13F filing, it shows that Berkshire has sold another 20 million shares or another 6.67% of their Apple holding. Why? Well, that is the million-dollar question. Previously, Buffett has cited a few reasons for the sellown, including fears of an increase in the corporate tax rate, making him

1:32 want to clear profits now. He also discussed his desire to want to hold more cash with all that's going on in the world. And lastly, there was also the simple explanation of Apple's valuation ballooning up to a PE multiple of around 38. But truth be told, this time I'm not exactly sure why Buffett's making this move. I would say, you know, it's probably just the valuation. And it could very well be. However, interestingly, Apple's stock has actually fallen versus where it was when Buffett was previously selling. Now, this is just my own speculation, but it could potentially be around the headwinds Apple potentially faces surrounding tariffs. As in Apple's Q2 earnings call, the last info Buffett would have gotten before making this reduction, Tim Cook did actually note that the tariff situation is going to cost Apple about $900 million per

2:20 quarter. I can't say for sure, but maybe Buffett just saw this situation getting messier at the time and decided to cut a little bit. But then in other news, Bergkshire also made a couple of purchases, buying into United Health. Yes, the very same United Health that had their CEO murdered late last year in protest of their exceptionally high rate of claim refusals. An estimated 1th3 of claims submitted. I mean, I guess that's a pretty great business model if you can effectively charge people an insurance premium and then never pay out even when they do make a claim. But there has certainly been a lot of reputation damage for United Health over the past 9 months or so. Either way, that is a new $ 1.5 billion position in the Berkshire portfolio. And other notable moves from

3:05 Buffett this quarter were a 4% reduction in Bank of America, a 3% increase in Chevron, and a 4% reduction in Dvita Healthcare. Then from there, moving on into the second big news story of the 13F filings, we have one of Charlie Munger's favorite investors, Lee Louu, making a big new purchase. And that company being Pindo. In the most recent quarter, Himalaya Capital bought a massive 4.6 million shares of 482 million position. And this position has immediately taken second place in the portfolio behind Bank of America, occupying almost 18%. Well, technically it's his third largest position because the Google investment is split across two different share classes. But make no mistake, this is a really big bet from the Chinese investor

3:51 buying into one of the big Chinese e-commerce players. So what is Pindoo? Well, they are a competitor to companies like JD and Alibaba. But their stickick is the group buying model. So users can get big discounts on the app if they invite friends or family to join a purchase together. So it's targeting really price sensitive shoppers and it also brings a social element to the shopping experience too as you work together for better prices. Then in terms of how they make their money, Kindoro primarily doesn't rely on taking a cut of each sale like an Amazon. Instead, its main revenue sources are advertising services where merchants pay to promote their products within the platform. But probably the main reason you've heard of Pindoo Door is because

4:39 in 2022 they launched Teeu, bringing the lowcost factory direct model to the whole world. So why does Leelu like this one? Well, I'd imagine it's probably because of how they're trying to build a competitive advantage in e-commerce. You know, lowcost modes are everything. And beyond simply working on ways to give shoppers the lowest prices, they're also kind of building a network effect at the same time. The experience gets better the more your friends and family use it. You know, in this instance, the experience gets cheaper the more your friends and family use it. Notably, though, in the most recent quarter, they did experience a decent drop with operating profit down 38% year-over-year. The CEO said they're making substantial investments in their platform ecosystem to support merchants and consumers amid rapid changes in the

5:25 external environment, and that quote, "These investments weighed on short-term profitability." So hopefully for investors, this is a reasonably short-term decline because if you annualize their most recent quarter's earnings per share, gives you a PE ratio of 21 at the current time. But as of recording, the actual current PE using the earnings of the last 12 months is a very low 12.75. So I think from Leelu's perspective, he is hoping these investments pay off in the long run and he can capture the long-term growth of this usually fast growing e-commerce company. Okay, moving on into the third big news story this time round and once again, Bill Aman makes the list. This time, however, not for his investment in Uber, but for making a new investment in Amazon.

6:11 Persing Square bought about $1.3 billion worth of Amazon stock, which now represents their fourth largest position behind Uber, Brookfield, and Restaurant Brands International, and the position holds a very healthy 9.31% of the portfolio. Now, Persing Square did first disclose his position back on an analyst call in May, so there's already been a lot of chatter and analysis about this investment online, but I thought I would cover it here nonetheless. And at the time, Billman was very excited about this investment. On the analyst call, he called Amazon a quote fantastic franchise while noting Persing Square was able to acquire the shares at quote an extremely attractive price. In fact, Bill was able to get in after the shares had fallen approximately 30% earlier this year, an

6:57 investment that already would have paid major dividends as the company has almost completely rebounded, rising approximately 40% since. So, you might be wondering why did the shares dip so hard at the start of the year? Well, it was mostly down to short-term fear. Short-term fear around the generative AI boom and also US tariffs. But these are not factors that particularly bothered Persing Square. In fact, when talking about Amazon's cloud business, Ryan Israel, Persing's CIO, said, "This was a uniquely attractive time as we felt the company would be able to work through any slowdown," adding that Amazon is well on its way to continuing to deliver more than 20% earnings per share growth. So, they were very confident in the investment. And the best thing for Persing Square is that in May, Andy

7:44 Jasse, the Amazon CEO, came out and said that actually Amazon really isn't seeing any big impacts from the tariffs like at all. This is what he said. We haven't seen any attenuation of demand yet. To some extent, we've seen some heightened buying in certain categories that may indicate stocking up in advance of any potential tariff impact. We also have not seen the average selling price of retail items appreciably go up yet. But it gets even better for Persing Square because in Amazon's most recent earnings call from just a few weeks ago, Jasse reaffirmed that so far Amazon really have not seen any impact from the tariff environment. Through the first half of the year, we haven't yet seen diminishing demand nor prices meaningfully appreciating and this has led to a very strong

8:30 rebound in the stock. As I mentioned, up around 40% since Aman bought in. Now, that doesn't mean that Amazon can't be affected by tariffs going forward. Even Andy Jasse on the earnings call said as much, but it is a good sign for shareholders and it's a good win so far for Bill Aman. And with that said, the fourth big news story, the last one I'll cover in this video from the 13F filings this time around is Seth Climman doubling down on Google. The Bow Post portfolio added nearly 27% to their Google stake, taking it now up to 11.36% of their portfolio, the largest position in the portfolio worth 467 million. And I find this really interesting because at the same time, you've also seen investors like Leelu selling Google recently. And as time goes on, there's starting to become two stories with this

9:17 company. On one hand, you have an exceptionally profitable company that has a massive monopoly in internet search and basically prints money from that search volume. And in the most recent quarter, we saw that business continue to thrive with search revenue growing almost 12% year-over-year with the Google services business, which includes YouTube ads, Google network advertising, subscriptions, platforms, and devices generating $33 billion in profit. Then on top of that, they also have Google Cloud generating $2.8 billion in profit for the quarter. And all up, the business looks very tasty, pumping out 24 billion of free cash flow year to date. But then there's the other argument, the chat GPT argument. Now, while it most certainly is not showing up in Google's financial results at the moment, there is a growing cluster of investors that are starting to doubt the

10:03 strength of Google's long-term moat in internet search. Now, this is of course anecdotal, but these days I personally do not use Google search very much anymore. I'm much more inclined to search using chat GPT. And this is despite Google Gemini doing its best to do a similar thing for Google searches. Why? Well, personally, I like that Chat GPT gives me an answer that gets me 90% of the way there without having to click on any links. I honestly prefer the model of having to pay a monthly fee for ChatGpt than having it be free but packed full of sponsored links. Now, as I said, I'm just one guy on the internet and this is not at all being reflected in Google's financial performance. You know, the company is obviously rock solid and it will likely be for decades

10:49 to come. But there's no doubt that in the chat GPT era, more investors are starting to really consider the strength of Google's long-term competitive advantage, at least in search. But and of course, you get the other school of people, the Seth Clarmans of the world that see it very differently. I mean, Google's PE is currently 22. Not too bad considering its ongoing growth and its unbelievably strong balance sheet. And I think for Seth Clarman, this is what he sees. a business with a $95 billion cash cushion that's making almost 63 billion in profit and 24 billion in free cash flow every 6 months with a dominant and diversified advertising business and a cloud segment that's just on the up and up. And at a PE ratio of 22, Clarman clearly has been lapping it up. And with

11:34 that said, they are the four main stories coming out of the 13F filings this time around. Now, one thing I do just want to note though is that this video is in no way designed to imply a buy, hold, or sell recommendation on any of these businesses. I say this every time, but while it's great to see what the big investors of the world are up to, it is by no means a prescription for what we should be doing with our own portfolios. Think of it as an ideas list for future research. And then from there, the last thing I wanted to mention before I sign off is that the free 3-day investing workshop I'm hosting with Phil Town in Peach Tree City just outside Atlanta this September is fast approaching. Tickets are still available, so please get yourself along for the 3 days. It's going to be absolutely awesome. We have a whole

12:20 bunch of activities planned, including a completely free private barbecue at Phil's house for all attendees where we're essentially just going to hang out and chat and eat food for an afternoon. is going to be seriously awesome. So, please, if you have not signed up already, get on it in the next few days. Organize your flights and your accommodation and get yourself to Peach Tree City September 12 to 14. So, check out the link in the description or check out the QR code on the screen for more information. And I would love to see you guys there. Please come along if you have the time off. If you can get there, definitely do it. All right, with that said, thanks very much for watching, guys. Leave a like on the video if you did enjoy it. And with that said, I'll see you all in the next one. [Music]