Buffett's Bank of America Bet Hits a Billion Shares

The Berkshire Hathaway buying spree of Bank of America shares continues.

Last week, we told you that over three days, Buffett's company had bought $813 million worth of BAC.

This week, in two SEC filings covering Thursday, July 23 through yesterday, July 30, Berkshire disclosed it paid almost $920 million for 37.6 million more shares.

In total, with purchases every business day since the beginning of last week, Berkshire has paid $1.7 billion to add 71.5 million shares to its BAC stake.

Not including any purchases made today that have not yet been disclosed,  Berkshire has just over one billion Bank of America shares worth $25.4 billion at today's close of $24.88

That's 11.8% of the bank's outstanding shares, up from 10.9% two weeks ago.

Berkshire asked last October for permission to go above a key 10% regulatory level, and received the Federal Reserve's go ahead in April to go as high as 25%, although it has to remain a passive investor and disclose its purchases quickly instead of waiting until the end of the quarter.

Buffett didn't do much stock buying when stocks were at their pandemic lows in March and April. Now, however, he appears to be aggressively taking advantage of BAC's weakness this year compared to the benchmark S&P 500, and especially to the Nasdaq, which has been boosted by tech stock rallies off the lows.

Apple's almost 45% surge so far this year, including today's more than 10% rally to a new all-time high on strong quarterly results, has played a big part of that Nasdaq gain.

It's also added almost $33 billion to the market value of Berkshire's more than 250 million shares, now worth $106.6 billion.

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BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

BERKSHIRE'S TOP STOCK HOLDINGS - July 31, 2020

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 America, which is as of June 30, 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.

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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch