Buffett is still continuing to reduce his shareholding in Bank of America (BAC.US).

The latest filings show that Berkshire Hathaway sold Bank of America shares continuously from September 17th to 19th, raising $0.896 billion (approximately CNY 6.3 billion).

Selling at a massive scale of CNY 57 billion in two months, Warren Buffett continues to reduce his stake in Bank of America.

Berkshire Hathaway has submitted multiple filings to regulators to sell Bank of America stocks in the past two months.

Since July 17th, Berkshire Hathaway has sold a total of 1.97 billion shares of Bank of America, a reduction of 19% in its stake, bringing in a total of $8.09 billion (approximately CNY 57 billion).

After the reduction, as of September 19th, Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in Bank of America have been reduced to 0.836 billion shares. Based on the latest closing price of $40.87 per share, Berkshire Hathaway's stake in Bank of America is valued at $34.167 billion. Berkshire Hathaway may still be the largest shareholder of Bank of America, with a stake of 10.77%.

Prior to July 17th, Berkshire Hathaway held 1.033 billion shares of Bank of America, accounting for a staggering 13.08% of the company.

Warren Buffett's holdings of Bank of America shares originated from his investment in 2011.

As of the close on Friday, Bank of America fell nearly 1.5%, closing at $40.27.

In 2011, when Bank of America's stock price was low, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway made a $5 billion investment in Bank of America, acquiring preferred stock and warrants. After a few years, Bank of America increased its dividend payout ratio, and Buffett converted it into common stock. Data shows that since 2017, Bank of America's annual dividend payout ratio has been steady at over 20%, with an average annual dividend yield of around 2%. After multiple adjustments to the portfolio, Berkshire Hathaway gradually became the largest shareholder of Bank of America. Between 2020 and July of this year, Berkshire Hathaway has consistently held 1.033 billion shares of Bank of America without reducing any of them.

Since 2011, Bank of America's stock price has risen 8 times. Roughly calculated, with the $8.09 billion funds recovered by Berkshire Hathaway and the dividends received over the years, the investment in Bank of America has already covered the investment cost.

Berkshire Hathaway has significantly reduced its holdings of various stocks and accumulated nearly 2 trillion yuan in cash.

Buffett has significantly reduced his holdings of various stocks in recent months.

According to reports, Berkshire Hathaway reduced its holdings of Apple (AAPL.US) by over 0.389 billion shares in the second quarter, with a market value of approximately $82 billion (equivalent to 580 billion yuan), a decrease of 49.3% compared to the previous quarter, and a decrease of more than 10 percentage points in the portfolio allocation.

Berkshire cleared out its hold positions of 6.12 million shares (0.84 billion dollars) in the cloud computing star Snowflake; reduced its shareholding by 4.37 million shares (0.68 billion dollars) in Chevron; reduced its shareholding by 2.65 million shares (0.367 billion dollars) in the financial holding company COF...

It is worth noting that Buffett has been net selling stocks for seven consecutive quarters, shrinking the overall size of its stock holdings in the US. As of the end of June, Berkshire's cash reserves were close to 277 billion dollars (approximately 1.95 trillion yuan), most of this huge cash comes from selling a large amount of stocks, especially Apple stocks.

Even Buffett is unwilling to buy more of its own stocks. Berkshire Hathaway disclosed in August that after a large number of buybacks in previous quarters, recent share buybacks have slowed significantly. According to documents, Berkshire repurchased approximately 0.345 billion dollars of stocks in the second quarter, the smallest quarterly buyback scale since 2018.

Aash Shah, Chief Investment Officer and Senior Portfolio Manager at Summit Global Investments, said: "Overall, Buffett seems to believe that the best investment at the moment is cash and government bonds."

Previously, at the 2024 Annual Shareholders Meeting, Buffett explicitly stated that holding a large amount of cash is "quite attractive" relative to available funds in the stock market and conflicts around the world. "We are willing to spend money, but it must be something (acquiring or investing in companies) that is doing something with very little risk and can make a lot of money for us."

Buffett's continued adjustment of the investment portfolio seems to have been recognized by the capital markets. On August 28, Berkshire's market cap surpassed 1 trillion dollars for the first time, becoming the seventh listed company in the US stock market with a total market cap exceeding 1 trillion dollars. Berkshire's stock price hit an all-time high on September 4.

This article is reprinted from "Daily Economic News", edited by Zhixun Finance and Economics: Jiang Yuanhua.