Video: Tracking Warren Buffett's Trades Using GURUG
GuruFocus Editorial and Support Assistant James Li discussed in a previous video how to use two major features of our Excel Add-In, a popular GuruFocus Premium and Premium Plus feature: Equity Screen and GURUF. In today's video, as a nod to "Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) Wednesday," we will discuss how to retrieve the latest trades from Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)'s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A)(NYSE:BRK.B) using GURUG, a sister function of GURUF.
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The intrinsic value of DAL
Peter Lynch Chart of DAL
Background
Figure 1 illustrates a snapshot of Buffett's latest trades.
Figure 1
One might notice clock symbols next to some of the stock tickers, as highlighted in Figure 1. The clock symbol indicates that the said trade is a Real-Time Pick: Premium members have access to data on such trades, in which the guru makes a trade in a company where he or she owns at least 5% of a company's total shares outstanding. Per Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, gurus must file these trades within two weeks.
As Figure 1 illustrates, Buffett's conglomerate made two real-time trades in the airline industry in early April: Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE:DAL) and Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE:LUV).
GURUG function walkthrough
The GURU UDF Library add-in contains three user-defined functions: GURUF, GURUG and GURUE. We discussed GURUF, the function for retrieving stock financial data, in the previous video. The F in "GURUF" stands for financial.
Likewise, the second G in "GURUG" stands for guru, i.e., the function allows users to retrieve guru trade data. Figure 2 illustrates a screen shot listing the parameters for GURUG.
Figure 2
To retrieve the stocks Buffett's conglomerate trimmed its holding in since fourth-quarter 2019, enter a GURUG function like the following:
=GURUG("Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)","Reduce","2019-10-01","","Y")
Note that the start date above (2019-10-01) represents the first day of the three months ending December 2019, the most-recent quarterly portfolio available for Berkshire as of this writing. The conglomerate has not released its March 2020 quarter portfolio as the deadline is 45 days after the quarter ends per SEC regulations.
The following video illustrates the process to retrieve the output shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
If you set the "show caption" parameter to yes, GURUG will display the header row, which by default contains the following columns:
Symbol
Company
Current Price
RecmDate: the date of transaction
Trans_share: the transaction's impact to portfolio
RecmPrice: the average stock price of the quarter
Price (3-month Low)
Price (3-month High)
Price Change from Average
Current Shares
For example, the output illustrates that Berkshire trimmed his Delta position on April 2, impacting the equity portfolio by 0.13%. Shares traded around $24.19 that day; the stock is now trading approximately 2.85% higher. As of April 2, Buffett's conglomerate owns 58,900,759 shares.
See also
Figure 3 illustrates some of Berkshire's other trades made since fourth-quarter 2019, including some reductions in his top five holdings: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC), Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO), American Express Co. (NYSE:AXP) and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC). For example, Berkshire trimmed its Wells Fargo holding to just 323,212,918 shares, reducing the portfolio 1.30%. The shares averaged $52.48 during the quarter.
Disclosure: As of writing, the author is long Apple and Southwest.
Read more here:
Video: Exploring Key GuruFocus Excel Add-In Features
Video: 4 Large-Cap Stocks With Strong Buffett-Munger Characteristics
Warren Buffett's Market Indicator Falls Near 3-Year Low
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This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
