(Almost) everyone's a critic

Warren Buffett has been the subject of some negative headlines after he admitted making a multi-billion dollar mistake on airline stocks and revealing that Berkshire Hathaway didn't do much buying amid the stock market carnage in March prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It doesn't help that Berkshire's stock has been lagging the S&P, especially in the last few weeks. (See "Berkshire Stock Watch" below)

In a follow-up to last week's "end of the Warren Buffett era" column, MarketWatch, Howard Gold calculates Berkshire lost a total of at least $7 billion on the airlines (American, Delta, Southwest, United), and two other big investments, Kraft Heinz and Occidental Petroleum.

He asks, "After all these mishaps and losses, who would want to bet a single share of Berkshire Hathaway stock that Warren Buffett is going to return to his former glory?"

Markets Insider notes that Smead Capital Management's Tony Scherrer blogged his disappointment that several times during the annual meeting, Buffett recommended S&P index funds.

Scherrer argues that since Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Facebook, and Microsoft account for a fifth of the index's weighting, Buffett "didn't shy folks away from today's glamour tech stocks which require more and more capital," the same kind of company that Buffett called "gruesome" in his 2007 letter. (Buffett specifically cited airlines in the "gruesome" paragraph.)

"It looks to us like Buffett needs to listen to Buffett again. He is forgetting what gruesome looks like by fawning on the index and some 'obvious' winners of today." 

Even Kremlin-backed RT is looking at "What went wrong with Warren Buffett."

There is at least one defender. 

MarketWatch columnist Mark Hulbert writes that while "there may be other reasons besides his recent performance to question whether Buffett has lost his touch," anyone giving up on Berkshire's stock because its been underperforming the S&P 500, "should step back and give Buffett the benefit of the doubt."

His work tracking investment newsletter portfolios finds that "even among those newsletters that beat the market over the entire time they have been tracked, they lose money one out of every four years, on average."

Hulbert cites the "role of randomness" in year-to-year returns, referring to a study that found "because of luck," even long-term winning strategies will sometimes produce sub-market results.

What does Susie Buffett have in mind for North Omaha?

A real estate company affiliated with Susie Buffett's Sherwood Foundation has paid more than $4 million to buy roughly three-dozen buildings and vacant lots in North Omaha, according to a report in the Omaha World-Herald. (Susie Buffett is Warren Buffett's daughter.)

The newspaper says the purchases were made over six years in an area it describes as having "endured decades of economic decline and depopulation."

While the properties could give Buffett and her foundation a "major say" in redevelopment efforts, their intentions are not known.

Susie Buffett declined to comment to the paper, while the foundation and the real estate company didn't respond to its requests for comments.

Some neighborhood leaders are concerned they haven't been consulted, with one telling the World-Herald, “White people need to stop coming into a black community and making it all about what they want to see for us.”

A city councilman, however, is quoted as saying he's confident the community will ultimately have a say in what happens and that redevelopment will be good for the area.

BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET

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BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

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 March 31, 2020, as disclosed in the company's May 15 13F SEC filing, except for Bank of New York Mellon, which is as of April 8, 2020, and U.S. Bancorp, which is as of May 12, 2020.

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

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

My apologies to those waiting for the 2020 meeting synchronized transcripts to be posted on the Buffett Archive. We're working through some technical issues. Video of the entire meeting is available.

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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch