Berkshire Turns Buyer After 14 Quarters: Alphabet Is Now No. 3
U.S. markets are closed for the weekend; the next open is Monday, August 17 at 9:30 a.m. ET (4:30 p.m. in Istanbul). The weekend's real story sits in the 13F filings that hit the SEC on Friday evening: Berkshire Hathaway was a net buyer of $19.8 billion in the second quarter after 14 consecutive quarters of net selling — $23.5 billion of purchases against just $3.7 billion of sales. Alphabet is at the center of it: Berkshire added roughly 48 million Class A and Class C shares to lift the position to about 106 million shares, and at $36.6 billion at quarter-end that stake is now 10.2% of a $299.3 billion equity portfolio, ranking third behind Apple and American Express.
The mechanism is not an ordinary open-market purchase. Berkshire made a $10 billion direct investment in June to fund Alphabet's AI infrastructure and picked up the rest in the market — and with $365.5 billion still in cash, this is an allocation off the edge of the cash pile rather than a portfolio rotation. The same filing showed Bank of America trimmed for an eighth straight quarter yet still 9.2% of the book, Apple held flat at 22% after three quarters of cuts, the Delta Air Lines stake up to $5.4 billion (8.7% of the airline), and homebuilder Taylor Morrison acquired outright for $6.8 billion in cash.
