62% of Warren Buffett's $314 Billion Portfolio Is Invested in These 4 Unstoppable Stocks

 On Wall Street, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett is truly in a class of his own. Without using fancy software or trading algorithms, the Oracle of Omaha has, over nearly six decades, nearly doubled up the annualized total return, including dividends paid, of the benchmark S&P 500. On an aggregate return basis, we're talking about Berkshire's Class A shares (BRK.A) increasing in value by roughly 5,387,100% under Buffett's watch.

When you deliver outsized returns on Wall Street, you tend to draw a crowd. Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting regularly lures in the neighborhood of 40,000 investors eager to hear Buffett speak about the U.S. economy, the stocks Berkshire holds, and his investment philosophy.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.

But thanks to quarterly filed Form 13Fs, we don't have to wait a full year to get the skinny on what Warren Buffett and his top investment aides, Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, have been buying and selling.

Although Berkshire Hathaway closed out the June quarter with 45 stocks and two exchange-traded funds in its approximately $314 billion investment portfolio, one of the key traits that's allowed Buffett and his team to vastly outperform the S&P 500 for so long is concentration. In other words, Buffett and his team strongly believe in putting extra capital to work in their best ideas.

As of the closing bell on Aug. 16, 62% ($193.3 billion) of the $314 billion portfolio Warren Buffett oversees at Berkshire Hathaway was invested in just four unstoppable stocks.

Apple: $90.42 billion (28.8% of invested assets)

As has been the case for many years, tech stock Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) remains Berkshire's top holding.

However, the Oracle of Omaha and his team have dumped a significant percentage of their company's stake in Apple over the prior three quarters. This position once briefly accounted for up to 50% of Berkshire's invested assets.

Although Buffett opined during his company's latest annual shareholder meeting that he believes Apple is a great company, he also hinted that corporate tax rates are liable to climb in the coming years. With Berkshire Hathaway sitting on a mountain of unrealized gains from its Apple stake, Buffett presumed that investors would eventually come to appreciate he and his team locking in gains and paying a historically low tax rate.

Warren Buffett is also an unabashed fan of Apple's market-leading share repurchase program. Adding the $26.5 billion spent on share buybacks during the company's fiscal third quarter (ended June 29, 2024), Apple has put a whopping $700 billion to work repurchasing its stock since the start of 2013. Buybacks can incrementally increase the ownership stakes of investors, as well as provide a lift to earnings per share.