Since mid-July, in the sell-off frenzy, the shares held by Warren Buffett's $Berkshire Hathaway-A (BRK.A.US)$ at $Bank of America (BAC.US)$ have been reduced to below 10%.

In a document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday evening, Buffett disclosed the sale of over 9.5 million shares in three transactions from Tuesday to Thursday. This reduced his holdings to 775 million shares, or approximately 9.987%.

As the current stake is below the key threshold of 10%, Berkshire Hathaway no longer needs to report its related transactions promptly. It is understood that the SEC requires shareholders holding more than 10% of a company's shares to report transactions involving the company's equity within two working days.

This will make it difficult for market observers watching Buffett to anticipate the next move of this 'Oracle of Omaha' for some time. To find out more, we will have to wait for the next 13F filing in mid-November that discloses Berkshire Hathaway's equity holdings as of the end of September. Currently, Berkshire Hathaway remains the largest institutional investor in Bank of America in the USA.

Despite Berkshire Hathaway selling Bank of America's stocks, the bank's stock price has still risen slightly by about 1% over the past month. Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, previously stated that the market is absorbing these stocks with the help of the bank's buybacks.

In 2011, Buffett purchased $5 billion worth of Bank of America preferred stock and warrants to boost investor confidence in this troubled bank after the subprime crisis. In 2017, he converted the warrants into common stock, making Berkshire Hathaway the largest shareholder of the bank. Buffett also added 0.3 billion shares in both 2018 and 2019.

"Very cautious"

Before selling the Bank of America stocks recently, Buffett has been consistently selling various long-held bank stocks in the past few years, including $JPMorgan (JPM.US)$Please use your Futubull account to access the feature.$Goldman Sachs (GS.US)$Please use your Futubull account to access the feature.$Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.US)$ and $U.S. Bancorp (USB.US)$ Last year, Buffett expressed a pessimistic view on the banking crisis in 2023.

Buffett stated: "You have no idea what the stickiness of the deposits has gone through. By 2008, things had changed. It has changed. It changed everything. In this context, we are very cautious about our ownership of banks."

Buffett believes that the bank failures during the 2008 global financial crisis and in 2023 have weakened people's confidence in the system, while the lack of effective communication from regulatory agencies and politicians has made the situation worse. At the same time, digitalization and fintech have simplified the operation of banks during crises.