Buffett sees "room for improvement" for Elon Musk

In a video interview snippet released this week by Yahoo Finance, Warren Buffett was asked what he thought of Elon Musk's behavior as Tesla's CEO.

With a laugh, he replied, "Well, I think he has room for improvement. And he would say the same thing."

Buffett continued, "Some people have a talent for interesting quotes, and others (Buffett points to his own head) have a blocker up there that says 'this could get me into a problem.' But he's a remarkable guy."

Drawing a contrast with Musk's prolific tweeting, Buffett said he didn't see the "necessity" to communicate that way, noting he has only a handful of tweets that he didn't write himself ("I don't even know how to do it") on an account that was created for him by a friend.

Musk is in a legal battle with the SEC that began with a controversial August tweet claiming he had secured funding to possibly take Tesla private.

Last May, Musk and Buffett got into a mild scuffle involving competitive "moats" and who would win a candy battle.   

Buffett drops a notch in wealth ranking

Bernard Arnault and family are now ranked number three on the Forbes real-time list of the world's richest people, knocking Buffett down to fourth place.

Strong revenues released this week helped lift shares of LVMH, Arnault's luxury goods company, giving him an estimated net worth of more than $91 billion. Forbes estimates Buffett's fortune is around $86 billion. 

Wells should look beyond Wall Street for its next CEO

In the wake of CEO Tim Sloan's sudden departure from Wells Fargo,  Buffett told the Financial Times the bank's new leader should "come from someplace [outside Wells Fargo] and they shouldn't come from Wall Street." 

It's not because he thinks Wall Streeters can't do the job. "There are plenty of good people to run it, but they are automatically going to draw the ire of a significant percentage of the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, and that’s just not smart."

Berkshire is Wells Fargo's biggest shareholder with a stake worth almost $20 billion. The bank has been under intense pressure in Washington as it tries to move past scandals involving overly-aggressive sales practices.

Buffett's top question for candidates

Warren Buffett tells Yahoo Finance that given an opportunity to ask one question of a presidential candidate, he'd want to know, “What are you for that a majority of your followers are against?”

He's not optimistic, however, about getting a straight answer without "some kind of sodium pentothal or something."

One exception: Bernie Sanders. "He'd tell you."

Buffett hasn't said (or perhaps even decided) who he is supporting in the 2020 race, now that Michael Bloomberg, his initial favorite, announced he's not running.

Berkshire's Clayton Homes criticized in John Oliver segment

HBO's satirical news series "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" on Sunday featured a segment on mobile homes that has racked up around 5 million YouTube views.

It accused "large investors" of buying mobile home parks and then raising land rents, knowing that mobile home owners are "captive" customers because it is very expensive to move mobile homes that really aren't very mobile.

Berkshire was not accused of rent gouging. (Its Clayton Homes unit recommends on its web site that buyers invest in land for their "manufactured homes.")

But the segment did include a 2015 Seattle Times report that contends Clayton "preys on the poor" through "predatory sales practices, exorbitant fees, and interest rates that can exceed 15 percent, trapping many buyers in loans they can't afford."  A tape was played in which a Clayton collection agent suggests to a borrower that she "donate blood" to help make a payment.

Oliver noted that Clayton has denied the main conclusions of the Times report, saying its lending practices are reasonable and buyers have a choice of lenders.

At the 2015 Berkshire annual meeting, Buffett defended Clayton, saying it “has been exemplary” in lending intelligently.

BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares closed at $314,250 Friday, up 2.3% over the previous four weeks, and up 5.8% from one year ago.

Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares closed at $210.56, up 3.1% over the previous four weeks, and up 6.2% from one year ago.

The benchmark S&P 500 index closed at 2907.41, up 3.0% over the previous four weeks, and up 9.1% from one year ago.

BERKSHIRE'S TOP STOCK HOLDINGS 

Berkshire's top stock holdings by market value, based on today's closing prices. The number of shares held is as of December 31, 2018, as disclosed in the company's February 14 13-F SEC filing, except for Delta Air Lines, which is as of March 11, 2019.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

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