Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sold Apple shares. Should you?

Yahoo

6 hours ago

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B, BRK-A) sold 20 million shares of Apple (AAPL) in the second quarter. Slatestone Wealth chief market strategist Kenny Polcari, Nomura chief economist David Seif, and Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Allie Canal join Opening Bid host Brian Sozzi to discuss whether investors should follow suit and sell their Apple shares as well.
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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sold 20 million shares of Apple during uh the period according to uh new 13F filing. Berkshire's Apple holdings remain its largest equity stake by market value despite it dropping by about 9.2 billion dollars in the second quarter. So, my question is this, if the legendary Warren Buffett is selling tech titan Apple, should you, Kenny?
100% absolutely not. You're not going to make a decision just because because you have to look at what he's selling, where does he own it. Look, when he sold Bank of America back when it was trading at 39 and 40, everyone was going, oh my god, he sold Bank of America, I have to get out of my Bank of America. Bank of America is trading at $48 now. You have to look at where he bought it. He bought it at five during the crisis. It hit his price target, so he started to sell it out. That's not necessarily your price target unless maybe you bought it at five as well, and then you decide you want out. But, I would not be making a decision to own or not own my Apple based on what Warren Buffett's going to do. Like you said, it is still the biggest piece of his whole portfolio. So, I am not selling my Apple.
All right, Kenny, you're clearly fired up on this. Let me follow it on with this one. Have we reached the moment where the average investor should ignore what Warren Buffett is doing?
Well, listen, I think what the average investor has to do is, they can't necessarily think that they are the same as Warren Buffett. They shouldn't be planning their life around what Warren Buffett's doing. He's got a very different company. He's been in for a lot longer. Your situation is different from his situation. So no, I was never in the camp that you're going to build a portfolio around what Berkshire Hathaway's doing. So, I was never in that camp. So, no, I don't think you should.
Uh David, um on Apple. Now look, they, they did warn in this current quarter, they might see a $1.1 billion hit because of tariffs. How concerned are you about the third quarter uh tariff impact and what it is going to do or may already be doing to the financial statements of corporate America?
Well, you know, I I think it it's still unclear who exactly is paying the cost of these tariffs. I mean, we could easily be collecting 300, 400 billion uh dollars a year in uh in tariffs, and uh you know, it's a substantial amount, but it's got to come from somewhere. Uh we're not really seeing it all that much at least as of yet in the uh consumer price index. So, um consumer might be paying a little bit of it, but certainly not much. So, the question is, how much of it is uh domestic companies, and how much of it is is foreign companies? And and in the case of Apple, yes, it's a domestic company, but since it's producing uh overseas and then selling it here, uh if it's not the consumer, then it's got to be uh Apple in some form. So uh and and and not just Apple, but sort of, you know, companies in general. So, certainly it looks as though um given that we're collecting a lot of money and prices haven't gone up that much, um this is something where um it is going to hit the bottom line of companies in general.
Ali, uh Kenny brings up a great point. Um we may think we could pick a stock like Warren Buffett, but at the end of the day, we're not Warren Buffett. We don't have his billions. Maybe Kenny has his billions, but we don't have his billions. We can't move markets like he does. So, maybe we should just stop following them.
Well, you know, look, Warren Buffett is such a loved investor, and people have really looked at Berkshire as a a guiding light on how to guide different types of investment strategies. And Warren Buffett, one of his philosophies is, buy what you know. What do we do? We are constantly on this phone every single day. So, you are exposed to Apple. You see what it does, the innovation that it brings. Now, the ironic part about all of this is that's why the stock has been struggling. It's because the innovative side, the AI side of the equation just has lagged a lot of those competitors. But Apple historically, they're not the innovator, right? Other companies innovate, then they come in, and they just build and make a better product. And for Apple, the AI story is going to be more of a consumer story, and I just don't think we're there yet at this point. Right now, it's more focused on chips. It's more focused on B2B. Of course, the large language models at Chat GPT, that's something that everyday consumers are using more and more, but I think there there's still a lot more of the story to come when it comes to AI and how Apple can really utilize that in the future. Right now, it's not there for investors. That's why the stock is down about 7% since the start of the year, but you know, it's still something that you need to watch because I do think Apple can maybe surprise in the next year or so.
So Ali, what you're telling me is I need to go out and buy some Tyson Foods because I eat a lot of chicken.
Brian, let me ask you one thing. If people want to play that game, and they want to do what Warren does, just go out and buy Berkshire Hathaway, and then you're going to do exactly what Warren does.
My favorite panel of the week. I mean, you guys killed it.