Sixty years of Berkshire's public-equity book, organized by ticker — every position Berkshire has held in size, when it entered, when it exited, and why.
This is the portfolio ledger companion to the Institute's Berkshire Hathaway acquisitions record. Where that page catalogs Berkshire's subsidiary acquisitions — the wholly-owned operating companies inside the Berkshire structure, chronologically ordered — this page catalogs the public-equity positions Berkshire has held across sixty years of open-market investing, organized alphabetically by ticker. Every material public-equity position Berkshire has held at $100M+ scale or that generated substantial media and analyst attention is on this page: Coca-Cola (1988→today), American Express (1991→today), Wells Fargo (1989→2022 exit), Apple (2016→today, Berkshire's largest single position ever at ~$174B peak), Bank of America (2011 preferred, 2017 warrants, still current), the four airlines (2016→2020 pandemic exit), IBM (2011→2018, the rare admitted mistake), Chubb Limited (2023 secret buy, revealed May 2024), Chevron and Occidental Petroleum (2020 pivot to energy), and the five Japanese sogo shosha (ITOCHU, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo — disclosed August 2020, formal long-hold commitment). This is intentionally a living reference: as Berkshire files new 13Fs and portfolio events crystallize, the row is added, the status updates, and the sitemap timestamp bumps. Nothing here is investment advice. Everything here is a fact-checkable practitioner reference for a specific question — what does sixty years of Berkshire's public-equity capital allocation actually look like in ledger form?
This is the portfolio ledger, distinct from the acquisitions record. The Berkshire acquisitions record catalogs Berkshire's subsidiary acquisitions — the wholly-owned operating companies (National Indemnity, See's, GEICO, BNSF, Precision Castparts, Alleghany, Pilot) that sit inside the Berkshire corporate structure. This ledger catalogs the public-equity positions Berkshire has held across sixty years of open-market investing — Coca-Cola, American Express, Apple, Bank of America, Chubb, and dozens more. The two records are complementary: read together they show both the operating book and the equity book of the largest US practitioner-grade compounder.
Organized by position, not by year. Unlike the acquisitions record, which is chronological and updated with each new deal, this ledger is sorted alphabetically by ticker — the reference format professional M&A researchers and equity analysts use when they query a specific position ('what did Berkshire hold in Verizon,' 'when did Berkshire exit Wells Fargo,' 'what was Berkshire's largest position in Chubb'). Each row tracks the entry date, the approximate peak size, the peak share of Berkshire's equity book where notable, the current status (Current, Sold, Distributed, or Wholly Owned), the exit date if closed, and a one-line practitioner note on the hold or exit reasoning.
Coverage: This ledger tracks every material Berkshire public equity position from Warren Buffett's May 10, 1965 assumption of operating control through today. The scope is positions that reached $100M+ at any point OR that generated substantial media and analyst attention. Micro-positions, arbitrage trades, and the smaller adjacent Weschler/Combs new-issue positions are omitted — the 13F filings are the exhaustive record. What appears here is the ledger a practitioner needs to see to understand how Berkshire built and reshaped its equity book across six decades.
Portfolio decisions as practitioner case studies. Each row is a why-held / why-sold reasoning exercise. The Washington Post 1973 buy and the 40-year hold are studied together; the 1988 Coca-Cola initiation and 37-year continuous hold; the 2016 airline basket and the April 2020 unified pandemic exit; the 2016 Apple initiation, 2023 peak, and 2024 half-sale; the 2011 IBM entry, 2017 admission of error, and 2018 full exit; the 2023 secret Chubb accumulation and May 2024 forced disclosure. Berkshire's portfolio reversals — airlines, IBM, Wells Fargo, Paramount — are as instructive as its signature multi-decade holds. This is the reference set for that study.
Five structural observations across sixty years of Berkshire's public-equity capital allocation — the how-Berkshire-invests pattern that the ledger below documents position by position.
(a) Concentration doctrine. Berkshire's equity portfolio construction has always been structurally different from index-hugging peers — the top five positions have almost always comprised 65-80% of the total equity book, and the top ten 85-95%. At the extreme, Apple alone reached approximately 50% of the entire equity portfolio in mid-2023, and the top five (Apple, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, American Express, Chevron) held approximately 75%. This is not accidental; Buffett has repeatedly said 'wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.' The result is that the Berkshire equity book operates less like a diversified portfolio and more like a concentrated ownership stake in a small number of extraordinary businesses.
(b) Circle of Competence. The composition of what Berkshire has and has not held for six decades is itself a study. Berkshire held virtually no traditional technology positions until 2011 (IBM — later admitted a mistake) and 2016 (Apple — extraordinary success). There have been no biotech, no pharmaceuticals of scale after the 2013 J&J exit, no clean-energy positions inside the equity book (Berkshire's energy exposure runs through BHE, Chevron, and OXY common), no Chinese equity positions of scale after PetroChina's 2007 exit. Concentration is heavy in consumer staples (KO, KHC), payments and financials (AXP, BAC, MCO), insurance (CB, plus wholly-owned book), energy (CVX, OXY), and, in the 2020s, the five Japanese sogo shosha trading houses.
(c) The 2016 pivot to Apple and its consequences. When Ted Weschler and Todd Combs originated the initial Apple position in Q1 2016, the position was material but sub-signature at approximately $1B. What changed is that Buffett endorsed the thesis and scaled aggressively across 2016-2018, taking the position to $36B by year-end 2017. The position then compounded to approximately $174B by mid-2023 — equaling roughly 50% of the entire Berkshire equity portfolio and, at moments, approximately 6-7% of Apple's outstanding shares. The Apple position is arguably the most consequential single equity investment in Berkshire history by dollar profit and remains the primary explanation for the equity book's tripling in size across 2016-2023. The 2023-2024 sequential trimming (~half sold) marks the largest deliberate reduction of a single position in Berkshire history.
(d) When Berkshire sells — the actual pattern of exits. Berkshire's public reputation is 'forever' holds, but the actual ledger shows a substantial and instructive exit pattern. Freddie Mac was sold before the 2008 crisis (celebrated as prescient). Petrochina was sold in 2007 after an 8x return (Buffett cited both valuation and geopolitics). The four airlines were sold in six weeks in April 2020 (COVID reset). IBM was fully exited in 2018 after seven years (admitted mistake). Wells Fargo was fully exited in Q1 2022 after 33 years (Buffett cited governance failures after the 2016 fake-accounts scandal). Paramount was fully exited in 2024 with public acknowledgment 'we lost money.' The pattern: Berkshire will hold a signature name for decades until it will not, and when the exit comes it comes decisively and without emotion. There is no cost-averaging-out; there is a decision followed by a program of sales.
(e) The Weschler / Combs delegation and what changed. Ted Weschler joined Berkshire in 2011 and Todd Combs in 2010; each independently manages a portfolio of approximately $15-25B and each has been progressively responsible for a growing share of new-position initiations. Apple, Amazon, Chubb, Nu Holdings, StoneCo, DaVita, Charter, and much of the 2024 additions (Ulta, Domino's, Heico, Pool, Sirius XM) reflect their origination. Buffett retains sole authority for the largest positions and specifically for the Japanese trading houses. Greg Abel, designated CEO successor since 2021 and taking full CEO responsibility at the end of 2025, has publicly deferred capital-allocation authority to Weschler, Combs, and Buffett for as long as Buffett remains active. The equity book Berkshire holds forward is increasingly the product of the delegated team rather than solely of Buffett-Munger.
Every material Berkshire Hathaway public-equity position from Warren Buffett's May 1965 assumption of control through today, sorted alphabetically by ticker — the reference format professional M&A researchers and equity analysts use. Anchored by the multi-decade signature holds (Coca-Cola, American Express, Moody's), the largest-ever position (Apple, 2016→today), the crisis-era preferred structures (Goldman Sachs 2008, General Electric 2008, Bank of America 2011, Occidental Petroleum 2019), the notable exits (Wells Fargo, IBM, the airlines basket, Paramount, Petrochina), the 2020s energy pivot (Chevron, OXY), the 2023 secret Chubb accumulation, and the five Japanese sogo shosha (ITOCHU, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo). Sortable by ticker, company, sector, first-established year, peak size, and status. Search by company or ticker (AAPL, KO, AXP, WFC, BAC, IBM, CB, CVX, OXY, KHC, MCO, GEICO, WPO, PARA, PTR, DAL, LUV, UAL, AAL, HPQ, TSM, VZ). Every row is a fact-checkable reference. This is a living dataset — updated as each 13F posts and each material portfolio event crystallizes.
| Ticker | Company | Sector | First Est. | Peak Size | Peak % Book | Status | Exit | Practitioner Note |
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Berkshire's public reputation is 'forever' holds. The actual ledger tells a more interesting story: Berkshire will hold a signature name for decades until it will not, and when the exit comes it comes decisively. The four largest exits in Berkshire's public-equity history are Wells Fargo (33-year hold, exited Q1 2022), the four airlines (four-year hold, exited April 2020), IBM (seven-year hold, exited 2018), and Petrochina (four-year hold, exited 2007 at 8x). Each is a practitioner case study in what caused Berkshire to abandon a public thesis.
The signature 33-year bank hold, ended after the 2016 fake-accounts scandal and Berkshire's progressive loss of confidence in Wells Fargo's board response. Peak size ~$27B and ~10% ownership. Buffett publicly cited governance failure, not thesis change.
American, Delta, Southwest, and United bought as a basket February 2016 (~$10B collective at peak); every share sold in six weeks in April 2020 as COVID reset flight economics. ~$4B loss. Buffett said 'the world changed for the airlines.'
Initial ~$10B in 2011 at ~$170; peak $14B. Buffett called it a mistake in 2017 and fully divested by Q1 2018 at meaningful loss. The rare admitted-error large-position exit — still cited in Buffett shareholder letters as the primary example.
~$488M cost basis; sold July-October 2007 at ~$4B proceeds — a legendary 8x return in four years. Buffett cited both valuation and geopolitics; sold years before Chinese equity markets peaked. Celebrated as a signature timing call.
Sold 2000-01 entirely, years before the 2003 accounting restatement and the 2008 conservatorship. Peak ~$2.8B / ~4% of Berkshire's equity book. Celebrated as one of Buffett's most prescient sales.
~$2.6B position bought Q1 2022 as PARA (~69M Class B shares); fully exited during 2024 at substantial loss. Buffett publicly acknowledged 'we lost money' — the signature 2020s reversal on par with the airlines exit of 2020.
Practitioner lesson: Every serious equity portfolio ledger includes reversals of thesis. The Berkshire ledger is not the exception, and it is often the reversals — not the multi-decade holds — that are the most instructive rows to read closely.
Approximate current sizes as of recent quarterly 13F disclosures. Values are directional; positions shift each quarter with market prices and Berkshire's trimming and additions. Apple has been trimmed roughly in half from its 2023 peak but remains the largest single position.
The top ten equity positions collectively represent approximately 85-90% of Berkshire's public equity book — the concentration doctrine in numeric form.
The most common practitioner questions about Berkshire's equity portfolio ledger.
The Washington Post Company (WPO), bought June 1973 for approximately $11M cost basis and held continuously for 41 years until the June 2014 tax-free exchange in which Berkshire returned its Post shares for Graham Holdings's WPLG television station plus cash and BRK.B shares, remains Berkshire's longest continuous single-issue hold from initiation to exit. Among still-current holdings, Coca-Cola (KO, bought 1988-89 for approximately $1.3B cost basis) is Berkshire's longest continuously-held signature position, closing on 40 years. American Express (AXP, bought aggressively 1991-95 with roots in the 1963 Salad Oil scandal partnership-era purchase) is next. Moody's (MCO, received 2000 in the Dun and Bradstreet spinoff and never sold) is the quiet third.
In February 2016 Berkshire initiated positions in all four major US legacy carriers — American, Delta, Southwest, and United — as a basket thesis on industry consolidation. By 2019 the four positions collectively totaled approximately $10B. In April and May 2020 Buffett publicly announced Berkshire had sold every share, telling the annual meeting the world had "changed for the airlines" due to COVID and that he had been wrong on the basket. The exit produced approximately a $4B loss and remains the signature Buffett public reversal of the modern era — a decisive shift from a stated long-term thesis inside 90 days of the pandemic reset.
Apple (AAPL) was Berkshire's largest single equity position ever, both by absolute dollar amount and by share of the public equity book. Originated in Q1 2016 by Ted Weschler and Todd Combs and subsequently endorsed and aggressively added by Buffett across 2016-2018, the position peaked at approximately $174B in mid-2023, representing approximately 50% of the entire Berkshire public equity portfolio — the largest single-issue concentration in modern Berkshire history. Buffett trimmed roughly half of the position across 2023 and 2024. The next-largest single positions in Berkshire history are Coca-Cola in the late 1990s (peak approximately 8% of Berkshire's total assets), Wells Fargo in the mid-2010s at approximately $27B, and Bank of America post-warrant-exercise at approximately $41B.
Berkshire accumulated Chubb Limited (CB) across Q3 and Q4 2023 under confidential-treatment orders from the SEC, hiding the position from public 13F disclosure until the SEC forced disclosure in May 2024, at which point Berkshire held approximately 26M shares worth approximately $6.7B. The position was primarily driven by Ted Weschler and Todd Combs and has since grown to over $8B. The strategic rationale reflects Berkshire's affinity for high-quality property-and-casualty insurance operators with disciplined underwriting cultures — Chubb under Evan Greenberg has one of the strongest combined-ratio track records in global P&C insurance, a natural fit inside a Berkshire equity book that already carries substantial insurance-adjacent exposure through GEICO, General Re, National Indemnity, and BH Reinsurance.
Berkshire disclosed its initial positions in the five major Japanese sogo shosha — ITOCHU, Marubeni, Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui and Company, and Sumitomo Corporation — on August 30, 2020 (Buffett's 90th birthday), each at approximately 5% of shares outstanding. The cumulative investment at initiation totaled approximately $6B. Across 2022-2024 Berkshire scaled each position past 8% ownership and the collective holding grew to over $20B by 2025. Buffett has publicly committed that Berkshire will hold each position for the long term and will not exceed 9.9% ownership without permission from each company — a formal long-hold commitment that structurally distinguishes the Japanese book from the transitory tech, airline, and bank positions that Berkshire has cycled through in the same period.
Buffett has publicly identified several equity positions as mistakes. IBM (2011-2018, ~$10B entry, exited at meaningful loss) is the largest admitted error of the 2010s. Paramount Global (PARA, 2022-2024, exited at substantial loss with Buffett saying "we lost money") is the largest of the 2020s. Kraft Heinz (KHC, 2015-present) was marked down by approximately $3B in 2019 and remains held below cost basis. The mid-2010s Tesco position produced an approximate $444M after-tax loss. On the other side, Berkshire has publicly regretted exits from Costco (Munger's signature name, sold at low prices) and Freddie Mac (celebrated as prescient but sold years before the 2008 conservatorship crystallized enormous value avoidance). Every practitioner-grade compounder record includes reversals of thesis and admitted errors — the Berkshire ledger is not the exception.
Berkshire's public equity investing runs through three principals plus Warren Buffett. Ted Weschler joined in 2011 and Todd Combs joined in 2010; each independently manages a portfolio of approximately $15-25B and each has been progressively responsible for a growing share of new position initiations — Apple, Amazon, Chubb, Nu Holdings, StoneCo, and much of the 2024 additions (Ulta, Domino's, Heico, Pool, Sirius XM) reflect their origination. Buffett retains sole authority for the largest positions and the Japanese trading houses. Greg Abel, designated CEO successor since 2021 and taking full CEO responsibility at the end of 2025, will assume operational oversight of the equity book but has publicly deferred capital-allocation authority to Weschler, Combs, and Buffett for as long as Buffett remains active.
Berkshire's Wells Fargo position dated to 1989 under Carl Reichardt and had been a signature bank holding through the 1990s and 2000s, peaking at approximately 10% ownership and approximately $27B in value. Buffett publicly supported the position through the 2016 fake-accounts scandal but progressively lost patience with Wells Fargo's governance response across 2017-2019. Berkshire began selling meaningful blocks in 2020 and completed the full exit by Q1 2022. Buffett said in 2022 that the position had "been a very good investment for a long time" and that the change reflected his diminished confidence in Wells Fargo's board and executive team rather than a strategic shift on banking. The Wells Fargo exit remains one of the most consequential single reversals in modern Berkshire portfolio history alongside the 2020 airlines exit.
The Berkshire portfolio ledger is the companion to the Institute's Berkshire acquisitions record. Read alongside the following pages.
Educational reference. Not investment advice. Not a solicitation. Not affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates, nor with Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger (in memoriam), Greg Abel, Ajit Jain, Ted Weschler, Todd Combs, or any past or present Berkshire executive. The Baratelli Institute publishes under the Lowe v. SEC publisher exception; neutral positioning maintained throughout. Position sizes cited in this ledger are approximate and reflect publicly reported 13F filings, Berkshire annual reports, Buffett shareholder letters, contemporaneous financial-press coverage (Reuters, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, CNBC), and standard practitioner references. Dollar amounts are approximate; peak-size figures are directional and reflect approximate contemporary market values at the position's peak in Berkshire hands. Timing dates reflect approximate initiation and closure quarters; the SEC's 13F filings are the authoritative granular record. Corrections welcome via the link in the footer.
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