MONEY MASTER

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway  has taken a fresh $1.6B position in  UnitedHealth Group (UNH) , snapping up  5 million shares  in Q2 2025, according to SEC filings. The disclosure sent  UNH  shares surging  up to 9.6% in post-market trading . The move comes despite UnitedHealth navigating turbulence — from rising medical costs to leadership shakeups, including a CEO replacement and plans for a new CFO. The health insurer also reported its first earnings miss in over a decade earlier this year. Portfolio shake-up highlights : Exit : Sold entire $1B stake in  T-Mobile US (TMUS) . Apple (AAPL) : Trimmed by 20M shares, still Berkshire’s largest holding despite a $9.2B value drop in Q2. Bank of America (BAC) : Cut stake by 26M shares to ~8%. Kraft Heinz (KHC) : No change, despite earlier $3.8B impairment charge. Homebuilders : Added  Lennar (LEN) , reduced  D.R. Horton (DHI) . Steel : Boosted stake in  Nucor (NUE) . The filing also ...

Despite Warren Buffett’s legendary track record,  Berkshire Hathaway may struggle to consistently beat the market in the coming years . The company’s  sheer size limits its ability to invest in smaller, undervalued companies , making it more aligned with the broader market's performance. In  2024 , Berkshire Hathaway  barely outperformed the S&P 500 , returning  25.5% vs. 25.0% . Over the past  10 to 30 years , its performance has remained close to the market average.  Statistically, it would take over 100 years of continued outperformance to prove that Berkshire’s success isn’t due to luck . A key focus in its upcoming annual report is its  cash reserves, which stood at $325 billion in September 2024 . If this number increases, it could signal  Buffett’s cautious stance on the market . However, even with his exceptional record,  beating the market gets harder as Berkshire continues to grow . Key Takeaways: Berkshire Hathaway’s massi...

Today while reading the book "The Intelligent Investor", it reminded me of the core of investing and the need to filter the noises.  But I think the story regarding IPO just struck me more than the rest today. For those who have no idea what IPO is, it means "initial public offering", or the first sales of a company's stocks to the public. Looking at one of my favourite company, Microsoft, one could find great reasons to invest in IPO.....because if you'd bought 100 shares of Microsoft when it went on public on March 13, 1986, your $2,100 investment would have grown to $720,000 by early 2003.  According to the book, finance professors Jay Ritter and William Schwert have shown that if one had a spread a total of only $1,000 across every IPO in January 1960, at its offering price, sold out at the end of the month, then invested anew in each successive month's crop of IPOs, the portfolio would have been worth more than $533 decillion by year e...

Recently I've been reading the book "Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham and I came across chapter 15: Stock Selection for the Enterprising Investor . In that chapter, there was a part that talks about Warren's way of investing and I find it to be something worth sharing with you guys. WARREN'S WAY Warren Buffett, perhaps the most successful investor, who happened to be Benjamin Graham's most acknowledged and popular student. Buffett and his partner, Charles Munger combined Graham's "margin of safety" and detachment from the market with their own innovative emphasis on future growth.  Warren's Way He looks for what he calls "franchise" companies with strong consumer brands, easily understandable business, robust financial health, and near monopolies in their market like H & R Block, Gillette, and the Washington Post Co. Buffett loves to invest in stock when a scandal, big loss or other bad news passes over it l...

Oil price's plunge might seem like forever especially for those living in Malaysia. It's as bad as it could go but if there's any positive that is required, one just had to look at Warren Buffet. When most people turn away from oil, Warren Buffett goes in. The stock pick king is going in on oil. Has it bottom? Warren Buffett is expanding his bet on the oil industry, slowly adding to his already large stake in oil refiner Phillips 66 even as crude oil prices have sunk to a 12-year low. From Jan. 4 to Jan. 11, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, which Buffett has run since 1965, paid about US$390 million for an additional 5.1 million shares of Phillips 66, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The purchases boosted Berkshire's investment in Phillips 66 to 65.68 million shares, or about 12.3 percent of those outstanding, worth $5.21 billion as of Thursday's market close. Phillips 66 shares closed up $4.03, or 5.4 percent, at $79.28 on th...

As everyone from Ted Turner to Drake has said, the hardest part of getting rich is making the first million. The rest just comes naturally. The fact that wealth begets more wealth was illustrated once again last year by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, currently the two richest people on Earth. According to Bloomberg, the pair finished 2014 a combined $21.1 billion richer than when the year began. (Gates' fortune rose $8.1 billion to a total of $86.6 billion. Buffett's rose $13 billion; he's now worth $73.8 billion.) Gates and Buffett are aware of their privilege. They have both advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy. They have also poured billions of their own money into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest funders of charitable causes like infectious disease research, poverty reduction, and (more controversially) education reform. Source: Mother Jones

Recently the stock market has not been doing very well, whether it is in the local market or in the region or in US or Europe. For today, the FBMI KLCI ended lower for the second day in a row as weak foreign sentiment weighed down the market. It lost 9.22 points or 0.5% to end at 1824.32 as stocks such as IHH Healthcare Bhd and SapuraKencana Petroleum Berhad declined.  FBMKLCI Index I guess it's natural for people to panic when they see such a drop, especially if you are buying on news and projects that you heard of. When you look at the world market, you are probably even more afraid. Below are the indexes of the world market from Bloomberg. ASIA AMERICAS EUROPE Red signs are not what investors would wanna see. But there is one thing that is bigger than the trend, bigger than the volatility of the market...and according to Warren Buffett, it's the business. Warren Buffett in an interview with CNN The man known as America's ...

So, do you know who are the richest people in the United States of America? Well, the top two people in the America seems to remain in their position. They are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Both of them are still on top despite being generous. Read below for full story that I get from the Forbes 400: The Richest People in America from Yahoo Finance . Since the article is too long, I'll share it in this blog by separating the articles into few parts. It has been a year of reclamation for America's richest. The total worth of the Forbes 400 was up 8% to $1.37 trillion, well out-earning the 1% rise in the S&P over the same period of time. More than half (217) are richer than they were a year ago. The headline number tells a partial story. Just over one-third of the 400 failed to add to their fortunes or lost ground. Still far above us is the record of $1.57 trillion in total net worth set in 2008. But the very top of the list gained, as good friends Bill Gates and Warren Buf...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim is the world's richest person, knocking Microsoft founder Bill Gates into second spot, as the wealth of the world's billionaires grew by 50 percent over the last year, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday. Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim speaks during the Reuters Latin America Summit in Mexico City in this March 22, 2007 file photo. (REUTERS/Andrew Winning/Files) It is only the second time since 1995 that Gates has lost the crown, the magazine said, estimating Slim's net worth at $53.5 billion, compared to Gates's $53 billion fortune, while investor Warren Buffett came in at No. 3 with $47 billion. The trio regained $41.5 billion of the $68 billion they had lost the previous year, Forbes said. The number of billionaires around the world has nearly recovered in 2010 after dropping by a third last year during the global financial crisis. There are now 1,011 billionaires, compared with 793 last year and 1,125 in 2008. The net wealth ...