So, for fun, I wrote a script that grabs manager holdings and compares the portfolio since the last time a 13F was filed. This is available at places like dataroma.com but I wanted to be able to check out my own institutions that may not be superinvestors.
When I wanted to diff the 13F files, I used to download them to a spreadsheet and do it manually. It was a pain because for companies like BRK who may have the same stock listed across subsidiaries, you had to aggregate the holdings. Many of you know what a pain that is.
Computer Stuff (uh, yes, it’s a tangent)
Anyway, to make matters more interesting (OK, for most of you this part is irrelevant and not very interesting) I wrote this whole program on a Linux laptop (Ubuntu 14.04 at the time; I have since upgraded to Ubuntu 16.04) using the VIM editor (I used to use vi in a Unix environment a long time ago in my hedge fund days). Programmers know how much of a pain VI/VIM is until you get used to it. I had to refresh my memory but thought it was so cool to use vi again so I stuck it out and used it to write the whole program. (Now I use mostly Geany on my Linux machine, Notepad++ on Windows machines, and Idle or Spyder (depending on project) for Python).
The program itself is written in PHP, and I used the XAMPP/Apache web server as my local host. Anyway, something like this would have been much easier for me to write in Python, but I think I wanted some stuff on the web so wrote it directly in PHP. I haven’t worked with Flask/Django so wouldn’t know how to put Python-generated content on a website (well, there are other ways; I do use Python to update google sheets and then use PHP to grab google sheet data etc. for some non-financial stuff I do).
All of this happened a few months ago, actually.
Linux/Open Source
…and here’s another thing (another tangent off a tangent). After turning my old, dead (or so I thought) Dell laptop (XPS M1710 that used to run Windows XP) into a Linux machine, I have really been loving the experience.
And what I noticed is that if you go to Barnes & Noble and look for computer-related magazines, you will see a bunch of them about Ubuntu, Linux and others. I love those Linux magazines but they are expensive. Why are they expensive? Because they are all published in Britain! Linux Voice, Linux Format etc… they are all published in the UK. Even the website design/programming related magazines are all UK magazines.
If you have kids, the other cool thing these days (other than Pokemon Go) is the Raspberry Pi, which is basically just a cheap computer on a motherboard (google it to see what it’s about). And that’s a UK invention, so of course, all of the Raspberry Pi related magazines are published in the UK.
Maybe there is something about the publishing industry in the UK that make these magazines possible. Or maybe there is too much commercialism in the U.S. for there to be support for anything open source (and therefore anything threatening Microsoft). I don’t know. If it’s open source, nobody is going to make money, and if nobody is going to make money, who is going to buy ad pages? Maybe that’s it.
But it makes me wonder. As a geek into this sort of thing, it seems like the UK is a much more exciting place. Also, it seems like they are more committed to teaching coding in the schools.
This sort of makes me wonder where the next wave of great innovations will come from. But, OK, who am I kidding? I’m sure the U.S. will keep leading the way.
Anyway, that’s straying too far from what this blog is supposed to be about.
Back to 13F’s
Let’s browse through some 13F’s. Most of this stuff has been seen and discussed already. Many websites track 13F’s closely and write about it, so I won’t mention most of the big investors.
Having said that, let’s look at BRK.
BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC
| Name | dollar amt | %port | #shares | change | %chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KRAFT HEINZ CO | 28,812,169 | 22.21% | 325,634,818 | ||
| WELLS FARGO & CO NEW | 22,704,405 | 17.50% | 479,704,270 | ||
| COCA COLA CO | 18,132,000 | 13.98% | 400,000,000 | ||
| INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHS | 12,329,439 | 9.51% | 81,232,303 | ||
| AMERICAN EXPRESS CO | 9,211,866 | 7.10% | 151,610,700 | ||
| PHILLIPS 66 | 6,250,563 | 4.82% | 78,782,000 | 3,231,255 | 4% |
| US BANCORP DEL | 3,430,598 | 2.64% | 85,063,167 | ||
| DAVITA HEALTHCARE PARTNERS I | 2,981,889 | 2.30% | 38,565,570 | ||
| WAL MART STORES INC | 2,937,332 | 2.26% | 40,226,402 | -15,009,461 | -27% |
| MOODYS CORP | 2,311,805 | 1.78% | 24,669,778 | ||
| CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS INC N | 2,134,924 | 1.65% | 9,337,491 | 9,337,491 | new |
| DEERE & CO | 1,779,577 | 1.37% | 21,959,246 | -1,321,748 | -6% |
| GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC | 1,628,365 | 1.26% | 10,959,519 | ||
| APPLE INC | 1,455,768 | 1.12% | 15,227,702 | 5,415,955 | 55% |
| GENERAL MTRS CO | 1,415,000 | 1.09% | 50,000,000 | ||
| VERISIGN INC | 1,119,894 | 0.86% | 12,952,745 | -32,255 | -0% |
| LIBERTY MEDIA CORP DELAWARE | 1,073,699 | 0.83% | 37,499,996 | 7,499,996 | 25% |
| U S G CORP | 1,051,494 | 0.81% | 39,002,016 | ||
| LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC | 902,592 | 0.70% | 30,712,739 | 6,903,848 | 29% |
| VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC | 837,652 | 0.65% | 15,000,928 | ||
| BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CORP | 809,137 | 0.62% | 20,827,212 | ||
| VISA INC | 759,438 | 0.59% | 10,239,160 | ||
| COSTCO WHSL CORP NEW | 680,511 | 0.52% | 4,333,363 | ||
| M & T BK CORP | 636,319 | 0.49% | 5,382,040 | ||
| AXALTA COATING SYS LTD | 618,786 | 0.48% | 23,324,000 | ||
| SUNCOR ENERGY INC NEW | 617,696 | 0.48% | 22,275,381 | -7,724,619 | -26% |
| KINDER MORGAN INC DEL | 496,708 | 0.38% | 26,533,525 | ||
| MASTERCARD INC | 434,555 | 0.34% | 4,934,756 | ||
| TORCHMARK CORP | 392,788 | 0.30% | 6,353,727 | ||
| RESTAURANT BRANDS INTL INC | 351,030 | 0.27% | 8,438,225 | ||
| GENERAL ELECTRIC CO | 333,233 | 0.26% | 10,585,502 | ||
| WABCO HLDGS INC | 296,420 | 0.23% | 3,237,094 | ||
| TWENTY FIRST CENTY FOX INC | 242,148 | 0.19% | 8,951,869 | ||
| SANOFI | 163,461 | 0.13% | 3,905,875 | ||
| VERISK ANALYTICS INC | 126,763 | 0.10% | 1,563,434 | ||
| MEDIA GEN INC NEW | 59,672 | 0.05% | 3,471,309 | ||
| GRAHAM HLDGS CO | 52,663 | 0.04% | 107,575 | ||
| JOHNSON & JOHNSON | 39,677 | 0.03% | 327,100 | ||
| NOW INC | 33,116 | 0.03% | 1,825,569 | ||
| PROCTER & GAMBLE CO | 26,705 | 0.02% | 315,400 | ||
| MONDELEZ INTL INC | 26,305 | 0.02% | 578,000 | ||
| UNITED PARCEL SERVICE INC | 6,399 | 0.00% | 59,400 | ||
| LEE ENTERPRISES INC | 170 | 0.00% | 88,863 | ||
| CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS INC D | 0 | 0.00% | 10,326,803 | -10,326,803 | -100% |
| Total Sum | 129,704,731 |
(sorry, but my tables show adding and dumping Charter Communication, but that’s due to change in the class of stock, I suppose, from the merger. Name changes also show up like this in my tables so look at the whole table before assuming a position was dumped).
| Name | dollar amt | %port |
| DAVITA HEALTHCARE PARTNERS I | 2,981,889 | 16.74% |
| CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS INC N | 2,134,924 | 11.99% |
| APPLE INC | 1,455,768 | 8.17% |
| GENERAL MTRS CO | 1,415,000 | 7.95% |
| VERISIGN INC | 1,119,894 | 6.29% |
| LIBERTY MEDIA CORP DELAWARE | 1,073,699 | 6.03% |
| LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC | 902,592 | 5.07% |
| VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC | 837,652 | 4.70% |
| BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CORP | 809,137 | 4.54% |
| VISA INC | 759,438 | 4.26% |
| AXALTA COATING SYS LTD | 618,786 | 3.47% |
| SUNCOR ENERGY INC NEW | 617,696 | 3.47% |
| KINDER MORGAN INC DEL | 496,708 | 2.79% |
| MASTERCARD INC | 434,555 | 2.44% |
| TORCHMARK CORP | 392,788 | 2.21% |
| RESTAURANT BRANDS INTL INC | 351,030 | 1.97% |
| GENERAL ELECTRIC CO | 333,233 | 1.87% |
| WABCO HLDGS INC | 296,420 | 1.66% |
| TWENTY FIRST CENTY FOX INC | 242,148 | 1.36% |
| SANOFI | 163,461 | 0.92% |
| VERISK ANALYTICS INC | 126,763 | 0.71% |
| MEDIA GEN INC NEW | 59,672 | 0.34% |
| GRAHAM HLDGS CO | 52,663 | 0.30% |
| JOHNSON & JOHNSON | 39,677 | 0.22% |
| NOW INC | 33,116 | 0.19% |
| PROCTER & GAMBLE CO | 26,705 | 0.15% |
| MONDELEZ INTL INC | 26,305 | 0.15% |
| UNITED PARCEL SERVICE INC | 6,399 | 0.04% |
| LEE ENTERPRISES INC | 170 | 0.00% |
| CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS INC D | 0 | 0.00% |
| Total Sum | 17,808,288 |
| Name | dollar amt | %port | #shares | change | %chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BROOKFIELD ASSET MGMT INC | 395,284 | 16.73% | 11,961,690 | -979,557 | -8% |
| BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC DEL | 356,730 | 15.10% | 2,432,332 | -222,699 | -8% |
| AMETEK INC NEW | 344,723 | 14.59% | 7,456,694 | -484,585 | -6% |
| SCHWAB CHARLES CORP NEW | 292,606 | 12.39% | 11,560,900 | -719,054 | -6% |
| WELLS FARGO & CO NEW | 275,483 | 11.66% | 5,820,464 | -381,628 | -6% |
| LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC | 249,859 | 10.58% | 8,685,850 | -505,729 | -6% |
| ALLISON TRANSMISSION HLDGS I | 129,536 | 5.48% | 4,588,604 | 4,588,604 | new |
| WABCO HLDGS INC | 128,135 | 5.42% | 1,399,310 | -102,928 | -7% |
| CROWN HOLDINGS INC | 74,230 | 3.14% | 1,464,961 | -1,496,522 | -51% |
| US BANCORP DEL | 62,431 | 2.64% | 1,548,005 | -413,603 | -21% |
| VALEANT PHARMACEUTICALS INTL | 48,868 | 2.07% | 2,427,903 | -163,496 | -6% |
| BROOKFIELD BUSINESS PARTNERS | 4,632 | 0.20% | 243,059 | 243,059 | new |
| Total Sum | 2,362,517 |
Share repurchases recycle capital back into the economy. It is not automatically good or bad. Look at Japan and their low returns on capital; largely because they don’t want to return capital to shareholders. They would rather hoard the cash, make stupid acquisitions overseas, speculate, buy expensive real estate, diworsify into an industry they have no knowledge of, build unnecessary facilities for unnecessary employees etc…
Notice GOOG at the top with an 11% position. This is not what you would really imagine as a Y stock. But I like GOOG so it’s fine with me. Not that I would second guess anyone. It is a relatively concentrated portfolio and I usually consider that a good thing.
| Name | dollar amt | %port | #shares | change | %chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALPHABET INC | 288,446 | 11.06% | 410,000 | ||
| CVS HEALTH CORP | 205,841 | 7.89% | 2,150,000 | ||
| MICROSOFT CORP | 153,510 | 5.89% | 3,000,000 | ||
| BLACKROCK INC | 136,984 | 5.25% | 400,000 | 175,000 | 78% |
| ROPER INDS INC NEW | 136,429 | 5.23% | 800,000 | -25,000 | -3% |
| CSX CORP | 130,400 | 5.00% | 5,000,000 | ||
| ALLERGAN PLC | 115,517 | 4.43% | 500,000 | 500,000 | new |
| VISA INC | 111,255 | 4.27% | 1,500,000 | -1,500,000 | -50% |
| JPMORGAN CHASE & CO | 108,383 | 4.16% | 1,744,178 | ||
| BARRICK GOLD CORP | 106,750 | 4.09% | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 | new |
| PPG INDS INC | 104,149 | 3.99% | 1,000,000 | -525,000 | -34% |
| WALT DISNEY CO | 102,711 | 3.94% | 1,050,000 | ||
| DENTSPLY INTL INC NEW | 99,264 | 3.81% | 1,600,000 | ||
| EXXON MOBIL CORP | 93,740 | 3.60% | 1,000,000 | 700,000 | 233% |
| VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC | 92,417 | 3.54% | 1,655,000 | -375,000 | -18% |
| DISNEY WALT CO | 83,148 | 3.19% | 850,000 | ||
| EOG RES INC | 56,995 | 2.19% | 683,406 | -316,594 | -32% |
| AIR PRODS & CHEMS INC | 54,685 | 2.10% | 385,000 | ||
| COMCAST CORP NEW | 51,817 | 1.99% | 795,000 | 795,000 | new |
| OLD REP INTL CORP | 48,225 | 1.85% | 2,500,000 | -331,467 | -12% |
| ARAMARK | 46,628 | 1.79% | 1,395,000 | ||
| BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC DEL | 41,986 | 1.61% | 290,000 | ||
| HOME DEPOT INC | 32,561 | 1.25% | 255,000 | ||
| DEVON ENERGY CORP NEW | 31,890 | 1.22% | 880,000 | ||
| NEWELL BRANDS INC | 30,985 | 1.19% | 637,877 | 637,877 | new |
| KIMBERLY CLARK CORP | 27,493 | 1.05% | 200,000 | ||
| PEPSICO INC | 27,016 | 1.04% | 255,000 | ||
| HESS CORP | 24,338 | 0.93% | 405,000 | ||
| L BRANDS INC | 23,163 | 0.89% | 345,000 | ||
| OCCIDENTAL PETE CORP DEL | 21,535 | 0.83% | 285,000 | ||
| POLARIS INDS INC | 14,309 | 0.55% | 175,000 | 175,000 | new |
| ARES CAP CORP | 2,674 | 0.10% | 188,326 | 4,660 | 3% |
| ARES COML REAL ESTATE CORP | 1,538 | 0.06% | 125,115 | ||
| CONSOLIDATED TOMOKA LD CO | 578 | 0.02% | 12,166 | 12,166 | new |
| ARES DYNAMIC CR ALLOCATION F | 131 | 0.01% | 9,550 | 224 | 2% |
| SABRE CORP | 0 | 0.00% | 1,890,000 | -1,890,000 | -100% |
| SMUCKER J M CO | 0 | 0.00% | 205,000 | -205,000 | -100% |
| PERRIGO CO PLC | 0 | 0.00% | 750,000 | -750,000 | -100% |
| JARDEN CORP | 0 | 0.00% | 740,000 | -740,000 | -100% |
| CHURCH & DWIGHT INC | 0 | 0.00% | 365,000 | -365,000 | -100% |
| ISHARES TR | 0 | 0.00% | 181,000 | -181,000 | -100% |
| Total Sum | 2,607,491 |
Could you write up a blog post on how you would do the script using Python? I've been trying to write out something like this in python and keep getting stuck.
Hmmm… I will have to think about it. I am not a particularly good programmer so would be embarrassed to post my code. I can help you out here in the comments, though. Where do you get stuck? If you know how to scrape data off of a website and parse it, it shouldn't be too hard as the sec 13F's are in nice, clean, xml format; much cleaner than trying to get data off yahoo finance (which was messy).
How far did you get and what are you having trouble doing, exactly?
Ok no worries. I can scrape sites like finviz without any issues – but trying to get 13F filings seems to be different process than just going to the site and parsing the xml. Maybe it's because I'm going to the wrong page?
Could you tell me what page of the sec site you go for the parsing?
Yeah, I think you are looking at the wrong page. When you go to sec.gov and search 13F, click the page that shows the xml (.xml) instead of the html (.html) page. For example, for MKL this is the page you want to scrape: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1096343/000095012316018929/form13fInfoTable.xml
Notice the .xml at the end. It's a very straight forward xml file that can be parsed with simple parsers. I use simplexml for php and beautiful soup for python.
This is what I was looking for thanks a lot.
Always appreciate your informative posts and the time you spend writing them. In the future, can you write an article on what your criterias are for what you look to purchase? When do you go after a growth or value stock? Are chart patterns ever used by you? How long do you typically hold? I've been using Gurus as guides, and then evaluating their largest % of portfolio holding and narrowing it down through research. You always seem to investigative and practical viewpoint! Thanks! And hope you keep on writing.
Hi, thanks. Hmm… Those are interesting questions and hard to answer. I am all over the place in terms of what I look for. I don't box myself in anywhere, so if it's a Greenblatt Stock Market Genius-like idea, great. If it's deep value and I like it, great. If it's a growth stock and a little expensive, well, if I really like the business, then fine, I'll buy etc…
One thing I can tell you is that I don't use charts at all. They're fun to look at but they are pretty meaningless. And my best performers are usually the ones I own for a very, very long time.
As an investor, I am lazy so if I find something, I want something I can own for a long, long time and I want it to just sit there and compound.
Otherwise, if there are interesting situations going on, I'll play those too (spin-offs etc)…
So it all just depends. If it makes sense, I don't mind playing it regardless of what box it might fall into.
If Apple did the same things as everyone else, they would have the same results as everyone else. Clearly, they never did in the past and they don't do in the present.
Have you taken a look at CHTR? Your post on DTV a few years back was excellent
Thanks. I do like CHTR and it's become one of the top holdings at Chase Coleman's Tiger Global too… I wrote about it in the past as Malone's vehicle. From here, it's up to how well they integrate Time Warner Cable and how much Rutledge can improve their operations etc.
I get this information on whalewhisdom.com, they seem to list everyone that reports, not just the super investor.
http://whalewisdom.com/, typo in 1rst post
Tech OT: Most of the big open source projects are mostly US based (although participation can be very international). And companies like Google and Microsoft (mostly since Nadella) release a lot of cutting edge open source software. So I think you are wrong that UK is more exciting place for geeky things (not that there's any need to hype Silly Valley). Though UK folks definitely try to do great stuff. And you could cite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_DeepMind as another UK breakthrough. 🙂
Raspberry Pi was likely done in UK because of the past Acorn and present ARM heritage. There were some similar projects in US, but Raspberry Pi seems to have hit sweet spot.
Magazines – I personally don't know anyone who reads computer related magazines. Maybe I'm in the wrong too-much-in crowd. 🙂 I don't know publishing in UK well, but some other European countries still have some costly paper magazines, so perhaps they survive on lower circulation but high cost.
Great job with your scripts and nice to see you posting lately. 🙂
Thanks for the color. It's silly to predict anything from the existence of a few magazines so I agree with you. And yes, these magazines I mention seem more geared towards the hobbyist (like me!).
Would be interesting to slice Todd & Ted's excellent adventure by each's sleeve size, ie Ted' Charter position is likely >20% of his $9B+ sleeve
It was an interesting to see a gold stock on Alleghany's holdings list. I've tried to stay away in general from resource names but I was pulled in this spring seeing names trade at EV/EBITDA of 2x in some cases (and some still do as the gold price has lifted). Do you every buy gold stocks or commodity stocks in general?
No, not really. Gold stocks have done horribly during this whole gold rally (I'm talking about the since 2000, not the recent rally) because costs went up as quickly or more quickly than gold prices.
Gold stocks are going nuts now because costs are tanking with steady to rising gold prices. And yes, they were really cheap recently. I think these are tough investments because of the wild volatility on both ends; revenues and expenses…
With Google, one thing I am curious about is the artificial intelligence side. Just like Nokia has popularized GPUs for machine learning and deep learning, Google, with its tensorflow library contribution for AI (open source for the basic, but they keep the most cutting edge stuff to themselves), could also have viable IP with tensorflow processing units for deep learning. If tensorflow becomes popular for deep learning, that is.
It's a small part of Google, of course, but it feels to me like a necessary piece of analysis to decide if it is cheap enough.
Just like Microsoft, which is #2 in cloud and which is building that business off of Office 365. Power BI is a viable competitor to Tableau for BI and Azure looks like it makes parts of machine learning easy to do, which may make it a viable sales pitch for companies. Again, just a hypothesis.
Not that I can afford any more hobbies, but machine learning is certainly something I am interested in. As for what happens within these respective companies, it's so hard to tell. Who knew Amazon would come to dominate cloud? Well, dominate may be too strong a word. The war is not over and will be ongoing. As unpredictable as tech is, these newer areas seem to me even more difficult to predict.
Break? I wanted to read about Barrick, OK I will wait.
Thanks for writing.
Come on! You mention Ted and Todd's top 3, but not #4 GM which is basically the same size as AAPL?
I get it I get it – auto manufacturing is a capital intensive, cyclical, overall crumby, totally un-berkshire like business.
but doesn't that make it more worthy of discussion?!?
We know that this is a Ted position, and we know that Ted tends to trade a bit more, but still, to own this name you have to have a view on either 1) where we are on the cycle or 2) what happens when the cycle turns south.
I don't think a BRK name would depend on timing the cycle, so I think 2 is worth discussing.
My quick thoughts are that new GM is a totally different animal than old GM b/c old GM was virtually gauranteed to bleed cash in any recessionary environment no matter how small, while new GM claims they can remain profitable through a MEGA recession on par with the "Great Recession."
It seems clear that a cyclical that can remain profitable through a down cycle is more valuable than a cyclical that bleeds in the down cycle, so doesn't GM deserve higher multiples? What multiples do other "profitable through the down cycle" cyclicals trade at near the top of the cycle? Significantly higher than 5-6x, no? Any why does peak mean that decline is imminent? Plenty of historical evidence suggests that sideways for a few years is more likely, and sideways at 5-6x when the company is returning a ton of capital can lead to very big returns!
The problem is of course that the market probably wants to see hard evidence that the company can perform through a down cycle, so to hold this you need to be comfortable with volatility… but we know the brooklyn investor is comfortable with volatility!
anyway, sorry if that turned it to a bit of rant, but i'd be curious to hear your thoughts, even though i get that this is not your typical type of stock. keep up the great work!!
Good points. Einhorn likes it too. I took a good look at it post-bankruptcy and it is very interesting. The only thing that gets me is the seeming over-capacity in the industry. I don't have figures but it just seems like everyone is just making more cars. Great in good times, but when the cycle turns, what happens to all this capacity?
But yes, this concern is priced into the stock at a low multiple.
With buybacks, even the standard of "intrinsic value" is a bit sketchy in that it conflates management and investor behavior. From management's POV, it might make sense to repurchase shares above intrinsic value because the broader universe of stocks is cheap relative to reinvestment opportunities. But if we judge buybacks, ex post, by looking at subsequent stock returns, then we implicitly credit management with the investor's decision to hold the stock.