Cramer: Berkshire's stock portfolio is not "great"

In response to a viewer's question about Berkshire Hathaway during his "Mad Money Lightning Round," CNBC's Jim Cramer said that with disappointments like American Express, Coca-Cola, and Wells Fargo, "It is not setting up as being a great time" for Berkshire's collection of stocks.

"I don’t want to bet against the great one, but that portfolio is not a great portfolio, but he cares a lot about taxes and therefore he’s not going to change it.”

Cramer did, however, add that Buffett bought Apple shares, which, as we noted last week, are near their all-time high.

With a market value of more than $91 billion, the stake accounts for 43% of Berkshire's publicly-disclosed portfolio of U.S. stocks, and is about one-fifth of Berkshire's $433 billion market cap.

Fed's Berkshire Energy bond buy criticized

As part of its efforts to help the U.S. economy through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve, for the first time, is buying corporate bonds issued by dozens of companies.

As part of the $428 million worth of bond buys disclosed last Sunday, the Fed purchased $5.8 million of debt from Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

CNN's Matt Egan points out the subsidiary doesn't need, and didn't ask for, the assistance, and the purchase "underscores just how far the central bank is going to prop up the capital markets."

Some analysts think it's too far. Egan quotes Bleakley Advisory Group's Peter Boockvar telling clients, "Warren Buffett, don't worry, the Fed's got your back... Monetary policy has now reached a new low in the US."

And Quill Intelligence's Danielle DiMartino Booth thinks, "This is really embarrassing. Warren Buffett doesn't need a backstop from the Fed."

Who would you cast to play Warren and Bill? 

Oscar-nominated screenwriter and author Anthony McCarten has a deal to make a movie from his upcoming non-fiction book "Wednesday at Warren's, Friday at Bill's," according to Deadline Hollywood.

The site describes the book as "both a rigorous examination of the 30-year friendship between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett which has resulted in the largest philanthropic initiative of all time, and an exploration of the role of super-philanthropy in a world where so much wealth now lies in the hands of so few." 

McCarten told Deadline, "I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment when each [Buffett and Gates] decided to give it all away, an impulse which has now created the largest philanthropic enterprise the world has ever known."

McCarten was nominated for writing "The Two Popes" (2019) and "The Theory of Everything" (2014). He also wrote the Winston Churchill biopic "Darkest Hour," which was nominated for Best Picture of 2017.

BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE

At this year's Berkshire annual meeting, Buffett went through the many "bumps in the road" that have been overcome throughout American history as part of his argument that the nation will also survive and prosper after the COVID-19 pandemic.

And while "we are now a better country, as well as an incredibly more wealthy country" compared to the United States at its creation, we still "have a long way to go" to fulfill "that pledge made in 1776 about how we believe that it's 'self-evident all men are created equal.'"

"We're far, far, far from what we should be — will be — but we have gone dramatically in the right direction."

Here again is the video we featured in the newsletter one year ago on why Buffett says, "Never bet against America."

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 U.S. Bancorp, which is as of May 12, 2020 and Bank of New York Mellon, which is as of April 8, 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.)

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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch