Warren Buffett’s Top 5 Stocks (72% Of His Portfolio)

0:00 Warren Buffett's stock portfolio is worth about $299 billion and it holds 29 different companies, but 72% of this portfolio resides in just five of these companies. And I think those five stocks and the reason that they're still in his portfolio will teach you more about investing than most of the books out there that are written about Warren Buffett. All right, coming in at number five is Bank of America, which makes up about 27 and 1/2 billion dollars in Warren Buffett's portfolio or a little over 9%.

0:31 And Bank of America is the stock in these five that has the most complicated story attached to it because Buffett has actually been selling the stock down since the middle of 2024. He actually trimmed another 5% of his holdings in the last quarter. Warren Buffett's original investment in Bank of America is a pretty funny story. In 2011, with the bank still reeling from the financial crisis, Buffett reportedly came up with this idea in the bathtub and put $5 billion into it.

0:57 So, him selling Bank of America now does not necessarily mean that the bank is broken, but it does mean that a position this big, again, over 9% is going to need to keep earning its place in Warren Buffett's portfolio. One quick piece of housekeeping because it kind of changes the story here. Warren Buffett is not the chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway anymore. Greg Abel took over as CEO at the start of this year and Buffett stayed on as chairman.

1:29 Which basically just means that Warren Buffett is still involved and he still has influence, but Greg Abel is actually the one making the final decisions. And here's the part that I find interesting. When Berkshire made its biggest move in last quarter, Warren Buffett actually told reporters, and I quote, "I initiated it." So, how do we even know what Warren Buffett owns? Well, any money manager running more than $100 million has to file a form with the SEC called a 13F listing every US stock they held on the last day of the quarter.

2:02 It is public and it's free, but it does come out 45 days late. So, we have is a snapshot of what Warren Buffett owned as of June 30th, 2026. Now, number four is going to be Coca-Cola sitting at about $32 billion or about 11% of Warren Buffett's portfolio. Berkshire owns exactly 400 million shares, has owned them since late 1980s, and paid about $1.3 billion total. Which is about $3.25 a share. Coca-Cola now pays a dividend of $2.12 a share. So, Berkshire collects roughly $848 million a year from position that cost them just $1.3 billion.

2:46 Set another way, this investment pays back about 65% of the original purchase price in cash every single year, and he has never sold a share to get it. Number three is going to be Alphabet, the parent company of Google, sitting at about $37 billion or about 12% of Berkshire's portfolio. This is the new one and is why the quarter was actually good news because Berkshire increased the position by 83% in a single quarter. A big chunk of that came from putting $10 billion directly into Alphabet's $85 billion equity raise for AI infrastructure.

3:19 Now, Buffett actually spent decades saying that he did not understand technology enough to actually invest in it. And he actually has called not investing in Google one of his biggest mistakes. So, from what I can tell, he is not buying just a tech stock here. He is buying a company that collects a toll on almost every search, every ad, and increasingly every AI query on the internet. Number two is going to be American Express at about $51 billion or 17% of the Buffett Berkshire portfolio.

3:50 And this, my friends, is where it gets a little wild because those 151 million shares work out to more than 22% of the entire company. He first bought American Express in the 1960s when a scandal knocked the stock down and his cost base is only about 1.3 billion dollars. The reason that he has never sold American Express is cuz it's not just a credit card company. It is a closed-loop network that owns the card, the customer, and the payment rails all at once.

4:20 This closed-loop allows American Express to charge its merchants more than any other competitor, which is essentially its moat. And by moat, I mean something that makes it to where another company can't just show up and take the business from American Express. And number one still is actually going to be Apple at about 66 billion dollars or 22% of the Buffett Berkshire portfolio. Now, I want to add some context to sort of shape the perspective on this one.

4:48 This position used to actually be double the size that it is today. Buffett sold about 2/3 of this position in 2024 and he said at the same time that a big piece of that was taxes. Berkshire put about 36 billion dollars into Apple starting in 2016 and Buffett calls it a consumer products company because what he is really buying is a billion people who will not switch phones. And Apple buys back its stock so aggressively that Berkshire's ownership percentage climbs every year without him buying a single share.

5:18 So, now that we have listed off all five of Warren Buffett {slash} Berkshire Hathaway's top holdings, let's talk about what connects them because that's going to be most practical for you when you're looking at your own portfolio. Every one of these businesses collects a small amount of money from an enormous amount of people over and over again without those people needing to make a new major decision. Coca-Cola gets a few cents on a drink that you might have been buying since you were a kid.

5:46 American Express takes a cut of a transaction without you even thinking about them doing so, and Alphabet gets paid on a surge you never questioned. Apple sells you a phone that you were always going to replace with a later model, and Bank of America holds deposits that you might never move. None of those are particularly exciting, and I think that's the point. He is not looking for a company that disrupts, that rapidly changes the world. He's looking for the company that takes small tolls on things that don't often change.

6:17 HAS ANYBODY GOT A DIME? SOMEBODY'S GOT TO GO BACK AND GET A SHITLOAD OF DIMES. NOW, let's talk about concentration. This is something that most people probably don't emulate. 72% of a $299 billion portfolio in just five stocks will get a professional money manager fired at most firms. Buffett has said for years that diversification is protection from ignorance, and it makes very little sense for investors that know exactly what they're doing. But, I've got to say, you have to be careful with that idea because it could be used to justify a lot of bad investment decisions for people that do not have Warren Buffett type of information or time horizon.

6:59 He can hold five stocks for 72% of his portfolio because if they were all to go to zero tomorrow, Berkshire would still own a railroad, an energy company, a pile of insurance businesses, and $365 billion in cash. And speaking of cash, it is the loudest thing in the entire filing. Berkshire is sitting on about $365 billion in cash and treasury bills, which is actually outweighing all the stocks that we just talked about. That number came down about 8% last quarter because Berkshire Hathaway was a net buyer of stocks for the first time in 14 quarters.

7:38 They bought $23.5 billion dollars stock, sold less than four, and bought back four and a half billion of their own shares, the biggest buyback since 2021. So, after three years of sitting on their hands, the money started moving again, and that is the signal I would be paying the most attention to. I have to give you the caveats because I try to keep things as real as I can on this channel. The first caveat is going to be timing because this filing shows us what Berkshire Hathaway owned as of June 30th, 2026.

8:09 So, a position could be gone, and we would not know about it for weeks. The second is that a 13F only shows US-listed stocks, so it leaves out the Japanese trading houses, the private businesses, and everything Berkshire owns outright. The third one is the golden rule here. Price matters. Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway bought Coca-Cola stock at $3.25 a share and American Express at $8.60 a share. Buying those same stocks today is a completely different investment.

8:39 And the fourth and final caveat is that Greg Abel is running this company now. So, just keep in mind that future filings from Berkshire Hathaway could be Buffett-inspired, but Greg Abel is making those final investment decisions. So, what am I actually going to do with all of this information? Honestly, not much. I'm not buying these stocks at the same price that Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett bought them at. And it is somewhat telling to me how they're actually holding more cash than stocks.

9:10 Even though that trend is reversing somewhat, that's definitely something that I think is worth paying attention to. Now, if you'd like to watch a video about the investing principles at Berkshire Hathaway that Greg Abel should continue to carry forward, then check out this video right here.