Baby Berkshire Still Bargain Hunting

• By the tickerspy.com Staff
• On 10:36 am EST, Monday November 9, 2009

A closely watched value-oriented Pro continues to see big bargains in the market.

Markel (NYSE: MKL - News) is often likened to Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A - News, BRK-B - News) because, like Warren Buffett's firm, its primary business of specialty insurance is augmented by a track record of generating solid investment income.

Markel's top, U.S.-listed, equity holdings from the end of Q3 are available at tickerspy.com.

Markel continues to like the bargains it is seeing. On Markel's quarterly conference call, Chief Investment Officer Thomas Gayner told investors, "As a broad generalization, the largest, most historically successful and financially strongest global firms on the planet are selling at their lowest valuation in decades."

With that in mind, Markel made several moves during the third quarter, most notably more than doubling adding to stakes in some well known brands, Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM - News), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT - News), and Marriott International (NYSE: MAR - News).

Elsewhere, the firm was trimming stakes in entertainment giant Disney (NYSE: DIS - News), Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM - News), GE (NYSE: GE - News), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ - News), and Berkshire.

Looking at tickerspy.com's graph charting the performance of Markel's end-of-Q3 holdings so far in Q4, one can see that they are keeping pace with the market. If you want to see how your performance stacks up to Markel's or just see some of its other holdings, visit tickerspy.com to see the firm's top holdings and a chart of their combined performance.

Pro portfolio performance is based on institutions' top-15 holdings as disclosed in quarter-end filings with the SEC. Pro performance does not take into account additional holdings beyond the top 15 nor does it include positions that are not required to be disclosed by the SEC. As such, Pro portfolio performance should be considered an approximation and not a precise record of how an institution has performed over time.

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