Apple tops Warren Buffett’s biggest stock holdings; accounts for 21.2% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio

Warren Buffett on May 4, 2024
For the third quarter, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported 46 holdings, but its portfolio is quite top heavy with 238,212,764 shares of Apple accounting for 21.2% of Berkshire’s portfolio.
Berkshire Hathaway’s top five largest holdings:

Apple: 238,212,764 shares, 21.2% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio
American Express: 151,610,700 shares, 17.7%
Bank of America: 568,070,012 shares, 9.7%
Coca-Cola: 400,000,000 shares, 9.4%
Chevron: 122,064,792, 5.9%

Stefon Walters for The Motley Fool:
‎

This isn’t exactly a model for diversification with five stocks accounting for nearly 64% of the portfolio. However, this strategy works for Berkshire Hathaway because it has dedicated teams of professional investors committed to managing the company’s holdings and their risk. This is nothing like the situation an individual investor faces, which is why Buffett has long said the best investment the average investor can make is an S&P 500 index fund.
That said, all five of the above companies are well-established blue-chip stocks. They will inevitably hit rough spots (as is the case for any company), but you can count on them being industry leaders for quite some time. While I wouldn’t suggest anyone blindly follow Buffett into these stocks, I would feel comfortable holding all five names in my own portfolio.

‎
MacDailyNews Take: Berkshire Hathaway, under Warren Buffett’s leadership, continued trimming its massive Apple stake throughout 2025, reducing it from 300 million shares at the end of 2024 to 238.2 million shares by the end of Q3 (September 30, 2025). This represents sales of approximately 61.8 million shares across the year, with major reductions in Q2 (20 million shares) and Q3 (41.8 million shares). No further sales were disclosed in Q4 earnings as of December 1, 2025, so the full-year figure stands at those 61.8 million shares sold.
Assuming sales were spread across quarters at average prices during each sale period (based on reported data and historical averages):
• Q2 sales (20 million shares): Average price ~$228.50 → Proceeds: ~$4.57 billion.
Current value (at $277): ~$5.54 billion. Opportunity cost: ~$970 million.
• Q3 sales (41.8 million shares): Average price ~$225 → Proceeds: ~$9.405 billion.
Current value (at $277): ~$11.58 billion. Opportunity cost: ~$2.175 billion.
Total Buffett left on the table by selling Apple shares this year: ~$3.145 billion (or ~$3.1–3.2 billion, excluding dividends on unsold shares, which Berkshire would have received anyway). This is conservative; if sales occurred earlier in each quarter at lower prices (e.g., Q3 lows near $202), the figure could exceed $4 billion.

‎
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post Apple tops Warren Buffett’s biggest stock holdings; accounts for 21.2% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio appeared first on MacDailyNews.