Financials

Buffett’s Berkshire Holds On to Apple Shares, but Trims Stakes in BofA, Citi and Capital One

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reduced its positions in several financial stocks in the fourth quarter, but didn’t sell any Apple shares. The Omaha, Neb., company continued to sell Bank of America, one of its biggest stockholdings, slashed its stake in Citigroup and unloaded part of its position in Capital One Financial, according to a regulatory filing made public after the market closed Friday. Berkshire unveiled a new position in Constellation Brands, which sells Modelo and Corona beer in the U.S., worth $1.2 billion at the end of December. It sold off its shares of Ulta Beauty. Observers of the famed stock picker were watching closely to see if Berkshire’s sales of Apple would continue for a fifth consecutive quarter. But Berkshire ended 2024 still holding 300 million shares of the consumer-electronics company. The stake, valued at $75.1 billion on Dec. 31, remained the sprawling conglomerate’s largest stockholding, followed by American […]

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Did Berkshire Hathaway Sell More Apple Stock? We Should Know More Today.

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Ever since Berkshire Hathaway began selling stock in Apple and Bank of America during 2024, investors have wondered when it would stop. CEO Warren Buffett’s followers should get a fresh read on Berkshire’s holdings in Apple, Bank of America, and other stocks in its $300 billion equity portfolio late Friday. Berkshire, along with most other institutional investors, will disclose its equity holdings for U.S-listed companies in a 13-F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The deadline is Friday, and Berkshire’s report likely will be released after the close of trading. The filing will also show any new stock purchases by Berkshire in the period, although investors looking for a big new holding could be disappointed. Buffett’s company did little buying and a lot of selling of stocks in the first three quarters of 2024. It bought just $5.8 billion of stocks while selling $133 billion, according to its third

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S&P Global Positioned for ‘Positive Revisions’ Amid Conservative 2025 Outlook, Morgan Stanley Says

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S&P Global (SPGI) is positioned for “positive revisions” given its strong Q4 results and conservative 2025 outlook, Morgan Stanley said in a Wednesday note. The company reported Q4 adjusted earnings Tuesday of $3.77 per diluted share and $3.59 billion in revenue. S&P Global said it expects 2025 adjusted earnings of $17.00 to $17.25 per diluted share and 5% to 7% in revenue growth. Morgan Stanley highlighted the robust performance of S&P Global’s Ratings and Index businesses, as well as 5.6% organic growth in the Market Intelligence unit. The firm noted that the 2025 margin guide for Market Intelligence was solid at 33% to 34%, and sees potential upside in Ratings and Index, setting the stage for positive earnings revisions. Morgan Stanley raised its price target on S&P Global’s stock to $600 from $595 and reiterated its overweight rating.

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JPMorgan Chase Begins Layoffs, With More Planned, After Record Profits

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Managers at JPMorgan Chase started to notify employees of job cuts last week, people familiar with the matter said, as part of a series of layoffs the bank plans to make throughout 2025. Some employees in the U.S. were notified of layoffs on Feb. 5, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters. At least several of those layoffs were in the Houston offices. JPMorgan plans to announce additional cuts in mid-March, May, June, August, and September, the people said. Not every line of business will be impacted in each round of those layoffs. In February, fewer than 1,000 employees are going to be laid off, and was it unclear how many employees the firm plans to cut this year. The firm had some 317,000 employees as of December. A spokesperson for JPMorgan said on Wednesday that the cuts are “part of our regular management of the

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Why the Stock Market Loves the Latest Raft of Earnings

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It’s shaping up to be a strong earnings season — a sign that 2025 could be another robust year for stocks. While S&P 500 companies are still in the early stages of reporting December quarter earnings, the numbers look especially promising. A string of strong reports from Netflix, JPMorgan Chase, and Procter & Gamble has sparked investors’ enthusiasm. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 climbed 0.7%, extending the index’s 2025 gains to 3.6% while hovering close to its all-time high of 6090. Overall, about 80% S&P 500 companies had beaten Wall Street earnings forecasts through the end of last week, noted market researcher DataTrek. That’s good — if not quite as good as it sounds. Looking back over the past decade, about 75% of companies manage to report a so-called earnings “beat” in a typical quarter. There’s a longstanding gentlemen’s agreement between corporate America and Wall Street that analysts set the

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This Trend Could Spell Trouble for Bank Stocks

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New loans are a bank’s lifeblood, but investors seem to be willing to look through sluggish loan growth this earnings season. That might not stay the case if demand doesn’t pick up soon. Most of the largest banks have reported earnings and, on the surface, it has been a success. On the first day of big bank earnings last week, the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index notched its largest gain since the day after the presidential election. Of the first 17 financials to report, just one failed to beat estimates, according to LSEG IBES. One area of caution has been loan growth , which can only be described as sluggish. According to Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck, a basket of 25 banks, including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citizens Financial Group, and Regions Financial, have reported a median increase in loan growth of 1.13% from a year ago. While Graseck sees large-cap

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Berkshire Hathaway Stock Had a Bad Day. There Are Lots of Reasons.

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Berkshire Hathaway had one of its worst days of relative performance versus the S&P 500 during the past year. Its Class A shares fell 1.6% Wednesday, compared with a 0.6% gain for the broader market. A variety of relatively minor factors, rather than a single piece of major news, seem to be behind the decline. While Reuters reported that Berkshire’s Pilot unit, the country’s largest operator of truck stops, was pulling out of the oil-trading business, that isn’t likely to have moved the needle. Even if there were some trading losses in that unit, they would likely be insignificant for Berkshire given its $1 trillion market value. Pilot had no immediate comment on any possible losses. It said it is “focused on delivering reliable fuel supply to our travel centers and wholesale customers across North America.” Berkshire’s Class A stock finished at $691,500, down 1.6% while the Class B shares

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Schwab Stock Jumps on Earnings Beat As Brokerage Rakes in $115 Billion in New Assets

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Charles Schwab reported fourth quarter profits that well exceeded Wall Street estimates early Tuesday. Revenues also beat estimates. Shares jumped 5.35% in premarket trading. The brokerage giant said adjusted earnings were $1.01 per share, beating analyst estimates of 91 cents, according to FactSet. That’s 49% higher than the fourth quarter of 2023. On an unadjusted basis, Schwab reported earnings of 94 cents per share. Schwab said revenue rose 20% year over year to $5.3 billion. That was above Wall Street revenue expectations of $5.2 billion. Schwab also showed robust growth, hauling in $115 billion in core net new assets for the fourth quarter and $367 billion for 2024. In 2023, it brought in $306 billion and had an annualized growth rate of 6%. In addition, the company showed progress on another front that has weighed on the stock: paying down short-term debt that it accumulated in 2023 and 2024 because

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The Trader: The Stock Market Overreacts. Don’t Lose Your Head.

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By Avi Salzman The bond market is in charge right now — and that’s bad news for stocks. The major stock indexes fell sharply on Friday after the monthly jobs report came in hotter than expected and sent bond yields soaring. Investors fear that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates high — or even raise them — to stave off inflation. The yield on the 30-year Treasury note briefly rose above 5%, its highest level since November 2023. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 697 points, or 1.6%, on Friday to finish the week off 1.9%. The S&P 500 index also closed down 1.9% for the week, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.3%. The move wiped out all of the market’s 2025 gains, and then some. Predictions are turning ominous. “Today’s unemployment report likely sounds the death knell for this easing cycle from the Fed,” wrote Peter Graf, chief

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Up & Down Wall Street: Lessons From a Century of Stock Returns: Stay Invested, Let the Winners Run

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By Randall W. Forsyth Just a few stocks drive all the returns of the equity market while the vast majority matter little. Indeed, most of them just detract from gains produced by the leaders. This isn’t about the Magnificent Seven behemoth tech stocks, which have accounted for the lion’s share of equity returns over the past two years. A study of U.S. stocks’ returns over nearly a century finds that the median stock actually lost money since 1926 — even while a dollar invested across all stocks on average grew to $229.40 by the end of 2023. Of course, the concentration of outsize returns in just a few stocks is nothing new and, in fact, appears to be the norm over the modern history of equity markets that began in the first Roaring ’20s of the last century. All this comes from recent research by Arizona State University finance professor

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Bank of America Bond Losses Could Top $100 Billion Due to Rising Rates

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Andrew Bary A sharp rise in rates since the end of the third quarter widened losses on bank securities portfolio and could become an investor issue again when banks start reporting their fourth-quarter results in the next week. Bank of America has the largest unrealized losses in the banking industry and could be a focus of investor attention. Barron’s estimates that Bank of America’s paper losses on a portfolio of $568 billion of bonds, mostly U.S. agency mortgage securities, could widen to $111 billion or more, compared with $86 billion at the end of September. Industrywide, total unrealized losses could top $500 billion, up from $364 billion at the end of the third quarter. These losses involve all banks insured by the FDIC. The total potential losses would still be narrower than the nearly $700 billion at banks at the end of the third quarter of 2022. Why the wider

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Dividends Will Keep Growing in 2025. Where to Find Them.

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By Lawrence C. Strauss An important question for the market in 2025 is whether strong performance will broaden beyond the Magnificent Seven and other large-cap growth names that have dominated in recent years. But when it comes to dividends, this year is shaping up as one with healthy mid-single-digit growth across much of the market. “From a macro perspective, the main driver of dividends historically is earnings growth,” says Ben Snider, senior strategist on the U.S. portfolio strategy macro team at Goldman Sachs. “Earnings growth was good last year, and we think it’ll be even better in 2025.” Goldman is forecasting an 11% bump in S&P 500 earnings per share this year, compared with an estimated 8% in 2024. That, in turn, will lead to a 7% boost in dividends this year versus 6% in 2024, Goldman expects. Ohsung Kwon, a U.S. equity strategist at BofA Securities, has a more

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