Finance

Warren Buffett walks the floor ahead of the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 3, 2024.
David A. Grogen | CNBC

Warren Buffett sent shockwaves through the investing world over the weekend by slashing his big Apple stake by half, causing the tech stock to crater on Monday amid the intensifying global sell-off.
Berkshire Hathaway disclosed in its earnings filing that its Apple holding was valued at $84.2 billion at the end of the second quarter, indicating that the Oracle of Omaha dumped a little more than 49% of the tech stake.

Shares of Apple dropped more than 7% in premarket trading Monday. Global stock markets are on the brink of a major correction, triggered by concerns of an economic slowdown.
The 93-year-old legendary investor has been on a massive selling spree, offloading more than $75 billion in equities in the second quarter and raising Berkshire’s cash pile to a whopping $277 billion, an all-time high for the conglomerate. Buffett also started selling his second-biggest holding Bank of America in July.

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Buffett had already sold 13% of his Apple stake in the first quarter and he indicated previously that it was a tax-saving move as he expected the U.S. government to raise the rate to fund a burgeoning fiscal deficit. However, the magnitude of the second-quarter sale could mean tax was not the only motivating factor.
Berkshire began buying the stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs. Over the years, Buffett grew so fond of Apple that he increased the stake drastically to make it Berkshire’s biggest and called the tech giant the second-most important business after his cluster of insurers.
Berkshire’s Apple holding grew so big that it once took up half its equity portfolio, so the selling could also be out of portfolio management concerns.
Shares of Apple climbed 23% to a record high in the second quarter amid renewed optimism surrounding its artificial intelligence capabilities.

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Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said Monday on CNBC that the central bank would react to signs of weakness in the economy.
“I’m not going to bind our hands of what should happen going forward, because we’re still going to get more information. But if we are not overheating, we should not be tightening or restrictive in real terms,” he said.

Austan Goolsbee, speaking at Jackson Hole, August 8, 2023.
David A. Grogan | CNBC

Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee on Monday vowed that the central bank would react to signs of weakness in the economy and indicated that interest rates could be too restrictive now.
Asked whether weakening in the labor market and manufacturing sector could prompt a response from the Fed, Goolsbee did not commit to a specific course of action but said it doesn’t make sense to keep a “restrictive” policy stance if the economy is weakening. He also declined comment on whether the Fed would institute an emergency intermeeting cut.

“The Fed’s job is very straightforward, maximize employment, stabilize prices and maintain financial stability. That’s what we’re going to do,” the central bank official said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program. “We’re forward-looking about it. So if the conditions collectively start coming in like that on the through line, there’s deterioration on any of those parts, we’re going to fix it.”
The interview occurred with markets in turmoil.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were off nearly 1,300 points, or close to 3%, as Treasury yields plummeted. The moves continued a downward trajectory that began Thursday, a day after the Fed opted not to lower interest rates, raising concerns that policymakers were behind the curve as inflation falls and the economy weakens.
Those fears were heightened Friday when the Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls increased by just 114,000 and the unemployment rate climbed to 4.3%, triggering a signal known as the Sahm Rule that the economy could be in recession.
However, Goolsbee said he doesn’t believe that to be the case.

“Jobs numbers came in weaker than expected, but [are] not looking yet like recession,” he said. “I do think you want to be forward-looking of where the economy is headed for making the decisions.”
He also said, though, that Fed policy is restrictive now, a position it should only be in if the economy looks like it’s overheating. The central bank has kept its benchmark rate in a range between 5.25%-5.5% since July 2023, the highest level in some 23 years.
“Should we reduce restrictiveness? I’m not going to bind our hands of what should happen going forward, because we’re still going to get more information. But if we are not overheating, we should not be tightening or restrictive in real terms,” he said.
Policymakers have been focused on the “real” fed funds rate, which is the Fed’s benchmark minus the inflation rate. As inflation declines, the real rate increases — unless the Fed chooses to cut. The real rate now is around 2.73%; Fed officials judge the long-term real rate to be closer to 0.5%.
Markets expect the Fed to head into an aggressive easing mode, starting in September with a 0.5 percentage point rate cut that is now fully priced in as measured by 30-day fed funds futures contracts. Traders expect the Fed to slice 1.25-1.5 percentage points off the funds rate by the end of the year, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool. More

As fears of an American recession spread, Japan’s markets took another beating. On August 5th the Topix plunged by 13% in its worst performance since 1987. The index is now almost a quarter below its peak, reached barely a month ago. The yen, meanwhile, is snapping back: it is up 12% from less than a month ago, when it was at its weakest in 37 years. These sharp moves carry implications not just for Japanese investors and firms. The country’s financial heft means that they could become a source of further volatility in nervous global markets. More

As we explain in our analysis of Pennsylvania’s economy, strong economic fundamentals will not be sufficient to propel Kamala Harris to the White House. Still, the health of the economy in the swing states should give Democrats some confidence in the final months of campaigning. Most have performed well in recent years relative to national benchmarks. More

Kamala Harris has all but erased Donald Trump’s polling lead in America’s six swing states, which is testament to the excitement generated by her late entrance into the presidential race. On August 6th she will speak at a rally in Pennsylvania, the most crucial of the swing states, alongside her new running-mate, who may well be Josh Shapiro, the state’s governor. Judging by her past speeches, she will warn that Mr Trump wants to ban abortion, is a threat to democracy and only cares about the rich. Underlying it all will be another message—that the American economy is the world’s strongest, and that the country remains a place of opportunity. More

It’s a July for the record books.
State Street Global Advisors finds inflows into exchange-traded funds hit $127 billion. Not only was it the best July ever, but the firm’s head of SPDR Americas research notes it is also the second-largest monthly inflow ever.

“Part of it is just the market,” Matt Bartolini told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Thursday. “We see investors deploy cash from the sidelines. A lot of cash was built up over the years. We started to see investors really make a concerted effort to continue to buy into this rally. We also saw sort of broadening in the market depth in terms of rotation take place.”

Bartolini also points to a narrowing spread between growth and value-oriented ETFs.
“It’s not so heliocentric towards tech,” he said. 

First trillion-dollar year for ETF industry?

BTIG’s Troy Donohue thinks ETFs are pacing for a major milestone by the end of the year, as long as the macro factors of the election season don’t make investors too hesitant. 
“It’s been a great start to the year,” said Donohue, BTIG’s head of Americas portfolio trading. “[It] could be the first trillion-dollar year that the ETF industry has.”
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Warren Buffett walks the floor and meets with Berkshire Hathaway shareholders ahead of their annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on May 3rd, 2024. 
David A. Grogan

Berkshire Hathaway’s cash pile swelled to a record $276.9 billion last quarter as Warren Buffett sold big chunks in stock holdings including Apple.
The Omaha-based conglomerate’s cash hoard jumped significantly higher from the previous record of $189 billion, set in the first quarter of 2024. The increase came after the Oracle of Omaha sold nearly half of his stake in Tim Cook-led tech giant in the second quarter.

Berkshire has been a seller of stocks for seven quarters straight, but that selling accelerated in the last period with Buffett shedding more than $75 billion in equities in the second quarter. That brings the total of stocks sold in the first half of 2024 to more than $90 billion. The selling by Buffett has continued in the third quarter in some areas with Berkshire trimming its second biggest stake, Bank of America, for 12 consecutive days, filing this week showed.
For the second quarter, Berkshire’s operating earnings, which encompass profits from the conglomerate’s fully-owned businesses, enjoyed a jump thanks to the strength in auto insurer Geico. Operating earnings totaled $11.6 billion in the second quarter, up about 15% from $10 billion a year prior.
Buffett, who turns 94 at the end of the month, confessed at Berkshire’s annual meeting in May that he is willing to deploy capital, but high prices give him pause.
“We’d love to spend it, but we won’t spend it unless we think [a business is] doing something that has very little risk and can make us a lot of money,” the investment icon said at the time. “It isn’t like I’ve got a hunger strike or something like that going on. It’s just that … things aren’t attractive.”
The conglomerate bought back just $345 million worth of its own stock in the second quarter, significantly lower than the $2 billion repurchased in each of the prior two quarters.

The S&P 500 has surged the last two years to record levels as investors bet the Federal Reserve would lower inflation with higher interest rates, while avoiding an economic recession. So far, that has played out with the S&P 500 up 12% in 2024. However, concerns about a slowing economy have been awakened recently by some weak data, including Friday’s disappointing July jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 600 points on Friday. Investors have also recently grown concerned about the valuations in the technology sector, which has led the bull market because of optimism surrounding artificial intelligence innovation.

Geico boosts earnings

Geico, the company Buffett once called his “favorite child,” registered nearly $1.8 billion in underwriting earnings before taxes in the second quarter, more than tripling the level of $514 million from a year ago.
Profit from BNSF Railway came in at $1.6 billion, in line with last year’s number. Berkshire Hathaway Energy utility business saw earnings fall to $326 million, nearly half of the $624 million from the same quarter a year ago. BHE continues to face pressure for possible wildfire liability.

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Berkshire Hathaway ‘A’ shares, year-to-date

Berkshire’s net earnings, which includes short-term investment gains or losses, declined to $30.3 billion in the second quarter from $35.9 billion in the same period a year ago. Buffett cautions investors to not pay attention to quarterly fluctuations in unrealized gains on investments, which can be “extremely misleading.” More

How quickly the mood turns. Barely a fortnight ago stockmarkets were on a seemingly unstoppable bull run, after months of hitting new all-time highs. Now they are in free fall. America’s Nasdaq 100 index, dominated by the tech giants that were at the heart of the boom, has fallen by more than 10% since a peak in mid-July. Japan’s benchmark Topix index has clocked losses well into the double digits, dropping by 6% on August 2nd alone—its worst day since 2016 and, following a 3% decline on August 1st, its worst two-day streak since 2011. Share prices elsewhere have not been bludgeoned quite so badly, but panic is sweeping through markets (see chart 1). Wall Street’s “fear gauge”, the VIX index, which measures expected volatility through the prices traders pay to protect themselves from it, has rocketed to its highest since America’s regional-banking crisis last year (see chart 2). More