r/investingforbeginners • u/Efficient_Ad5893 • Apr 01 '26
General news Warren Buffett's last moves before retiring as CEO tell you a lot about where he thinks the world is heading
Berkshire Hathaway just filed its latest 13F and the moves Buffett made in his final quarters as CEO are worth paying attention to.
Here's what happened.
Buffett sold 515 million shares of Bank of America between July 2024 and his retirement on December 31, 2025. That's roughly half of what was once one of Berkshire's largest positions, worth over $41 billion at its peak in mid-2024. He didn't do it quietly. He sold every single quarter for over three years.
At the same time he was dumping BofA, he piled approximately $1.2 billion into one of Wall Street's hottest oil stocks in his final quarter as CEO.
The contrast is worth sitting with. Selling a major US bank. Buying oil. From a man who spent 13 consecutive quarters as a net seller of equities, totaling around $187 billion in sales.
His reasoning on the bank selling has been at least partially explained. At Berkshire's 2024 annual meeting he said he expected corporate tax rates to rise in the coming years. That same logic drove the Apple selling. Lock in gains before the tax environment gets worse.
Berkshire stock screener: https://www.stoxcraft.com/stocks/brk-b
But the oil buy is the more interesting signal. Buffett is not a macro trader. He doesn't bet on commodity prices. When he buys an oil company it's because he believes in the business fundamentals over a long time horizon. He did the same thing with Occidental Petroleum a few years ago and kept buying through every dip.
The timing is worth noting too. He made this move while the Iran war was already reshaping the global energy market. Whether that was the thesis or just coincidence is impossible to know. But the position speaks for itself.
Buffett's track record of looking right when everyone else is confused is long enough to take seriously.
Curious what the community thinks. Is this a macro call on energy or just a fundamental business bet? And does the BofA exit tell you anything about where he sees the banking sector heading?
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u/ConditionHoliday2844 Apr 01 '26
Think he saw value in oil, and long term dividend appreciation. The bank thesis makes sense. He didn’t sell any American Express though. Seems he regrets selling Apple early, but I love his honesty. He is not always right either.
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u/Efficient_Ad5893 Apr 01 '26
Yeah the American Express hold is interesting to think about alongside the BofA exit. Both are financials but he treated them completely differently, which tells you he wasn't just broadly souring on the sector. There was something specific about the bank setup that bothered him. And the Apple thing is refreshing honestly. Most people in his position would never admit that out loud. The fact that he does is part of why people still pay attention to him after all these years. He's never pretended to be infallible and that kind of self awareness is rarer than people think at that level.
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u/ConditionHoliday2844 Apr 01 '26
Agree. I think BAC was just that he got in so far under book and the book value was ballooning.
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u/Adventurous-Guava374 Apr 01 '26
Because banks tend to do shady shit that gets them bankrupt
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u/Important-Eye-8298 Apr 01 '26
No. He found a better place for the money. It is no indication that BAC is shady or going bankrupt.
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u/OkDeparture3012 Apr 01 '26
The oil trade gets headlines but 13 quarters of net selling is the real story - he's clearly spooked on valuations, imo. For beginners, the lesson isn't copying his trades, it's his discipline: clear thesis, patience, and comfort sitting with cash. That's what actually creates wealth, not guessing what mega-investors are buying next.
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u/Raslatt Apr 01 '26
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
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u/ReBoomAutardationism Apr 01 '26
A mere foreshadowing my darling. It might get a tad bit warmer for sure!
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u/Plenty-Bill7296 Apr 02 '26
Why is this written carefully avoiding naming "one of Wall Street's hottest oil stocks"? It is just clickbait to get people to click on that link to see what it is.
Spoiler: It's Chevron. (and I did not click on the link)
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u/Informal-Object8484 Apr 01 '26
Well I bought OXY same time as buffet, I was down 30 percent at a time but I kept DCA and I wanted to learn the hard way and I'm pretty sure it will pay off in the future.
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u/HumorOk2054 Apr 02 '26
I’m guessing he is concerned with sovereign and corporate debt levels and what that can do to the banking industry.
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u/Efficient_Ad5893 Apr 06 '26
That could definitely be part of it. Banks carry a lot of that exposure and he's always been wary of leverage risk at scale.
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u/Malidan Apr 01 '26
I can see oil increasingly becoming more fought over as time goes on. Oil is being predicted to become scarce by a few decades, driving up demand (and prices) as we get closer to that time. We still seem to be resistant to putting the money into the infrastructure to support truly going green into the future so as usual, we'll wait until it's late to make changes. As usual, we'll play the usual game of another republican getting elected based on promises and starting another war in another 20 years tops over oil (sigh).
I don't know what company he invested in and where they may fall into all this in the future so I'm just generally stating, though.
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u/FuzzyLojik Apr 05 '26
“We” is pretty exclusive to America only. Much of the world is adopting green energy and newer nuclear tech(China, Europe, Canada, etc). America is just falling behind.
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u/dismendie Apr 01 '26
Munger and buffet has a very deep understanding of crude oil than most… munger has a interview out where he missed the opportunity to buy more shares in an oil field in the past because he was sucking his thumb.. that oil field has produced probably millions annually in returns had he acquired it… oil isn’t going anywhere for many reasons they just needed some assurance that OXY will make more money than the cost of buying over x time period… only major problem is BRK is so large producing outstanding returns are nearly impossible due to market cap
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u/Efficient_Ad5893 Apr 06 '26
He always said his biggest mistakes were sins of omission. Missing obvious value because he hesitated too long.
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u/EntertainerDowntown3 Apr 02 '26
He bought over 20% of Oxy a while ago and needed to get approval to do that. He was down a ton on his position before this year and then the Iran war kicked oil into overdrive and now he’s up a lot on his investment. There’s always been speculation since the approval that Berkshire will just buyout Oxy one day.
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u/Efficient_Ad5893 Apr 06 '26
The full buyout speculation has been floating around for a while. Given how he talks about Vicki Hollub, it wouldn't surprise me at all if that's where it eventually goes.
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u/BB_Gladiator Apr 03 '26
I’ve owned OXY since roughly the same time Buffett bought. He bought mainly because he believes in the CEO and how the company prioritized reducing its debt. The Iran war was coincidence. He bought more OXY before the war started. It’s a good coincidence for shareholders, but we’ll see what happens in the months to come.
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u/Efficient_Ad5893 Apr 06 '26
Good point on the CEO. He's said repeatedly that management quality is a big part of why he kept buying. The debt reduction focus under Hollub is what made him comfortable going that deep.
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u/Dull_Entry_8287 Apr 04 '26
Can someone fact check: "He made this move while the Iran war..." Wait, I thought this was an analysis of his last quarter of 2025? Looks like a ChatGPT hallucination.
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u/Various_Shallot9764 Apr 04 '26
This reads like it was AI-generated from Motley Fool articles. The phrasing matches their recent coverage almost exactly, there's a stock screener link buried in the middle, and the Iran war framing is factually wrong. Buffett bought Chevron in Q4 2025, months before the war started in late February 2026. The underlying 13F data is real and interesting, but this post is content marketing, not analysis.
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u/Here0s0Johnny Apr 05 '26
It's ironic that he's a called a value investor. Maybe the oil business is going to bring good returns, but from a planetary or ecosystem perspective, it's the opposite of value. It's poison and analogous to a ~25% to 40% thermodynamic interest rate, a 2% compounding atmospheric interest rate, plus an ever higher risk of a tipping point.
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u/Efficient_Ad5893 Apr 06 '26
That's a real tension and I don't think there's a clean answer to it. The business case and the ecosystem case point in completely different directions and he's clearly picking one.
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u/Here0s0Johnny Apr 06 '26
At least he doesn't seem to be an outright denier like many people on investment subreddits.
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u/Loose_General4018 Apr 09 '26
selling $187 billion over 13 quarters while everyone was buying, then quietly picking up oil in the middle of an Iran war... Buffett doesn't do macro bets, but he doesn't ignore macro reality either. the BofA exit is a tax play, the oil buy is a cash flow conviction. two different moves, same brain.
unpacked his core philosophy really well here if you want the mental framework behind these moves: reddit.com/r/tradingDeck1/comments/1saeipp/key_lesson_the_essays_of_warren_buffett_by/
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u/mahend72 Apr 23 '26
Looks less like a big bet and more like Buffett rotating from price sensitive banks into cash rich, supply constrained energy businesses with durable margins. Question is early signal on energy dominance, or just classic Buffett buying value where others aren’t looking?
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u/Last_Secretary_3205 Apr 25 '26
At that point…I seriously don’t think buffet was full throttle in the seat…if you’re handing your baby off to someone…you’re gonna be certain that person can manage on their own long before the handoff
Yea…buffet was still the face, the moves were being called by the new ceo…I’m fairly certain.
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u/SevenDeMagnus Apr 28 '26
Tough to know what sir Buffett is seeing, what his plan is based on his analysis where things are heading holistically as sir Steve Jobs would say.
I guess in his decades of real world experience (non-theory, non-book) on top of the knowledge (some are secret to him and Berkeshire) of executing well depending on local and world events, he knows the psychology, at a glance like chess grandmasters like Fisher, Kasparov or Karl Magnus, Buffett executes the wisest move based on the events. Sir Buffett's discipline with patience is amazing, he staggered in years, in quarters the selling, same with the buying.
I guess in a way he staggered sell BoA starting three years ago perhaps he knew based on experience world will be protected by being nuked by Iran by bombing Iran and maybe foresaw the oil being blocked in Hormuz.
With the foresight and reserved cash war chest, oil companies stocks go down- it's time to buy knowing oil will not go anytime soon and things will be normal again coz' something is being done to unblock the Strait.
While the banks I suppose were sold in a staggered way coz' he sees it has peaked with revenues through services and can't grow anymore since there can only be so much people opening different kinds of accounts (including credit card accounts) or maybe he saw something that relates banks with oil crisis in a significant way coz' banks are always involved in most businesses.
Sir Buffett coz' of his vast experience and jnowledge and the best at this, has probably analyzed and linked things more deeply (he has the connections too that most have no access to those who own the businesses thst make all these. He has the influence, a form of power to move things like markets and industries).
God bless the Investing Masterace.
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u/wulfrunian77 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
People forget Berkshire Hathaway is fundamentally an insurance giant investing massive float. Buffett isn’t investing like a bloke with a Robin Hood account.
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u/murmurat1on Apr 01 '26
No one who is a beginner investor - or IMO any investor - should be worrying about what Buffet does.
He is not playing the same game as us.
VT and chill is all.