Another reason investors watch Buffett is because he runs a $300 billion-plus equities portfolio that invests in some of the most popular stocks in the market. While the 13F report detailing Berkshire's exact stock holdings at the end of the third quarter won't be available until around Nov. 14, Berkshire's earnings report offered some clues about Buffett and Berkshire's investing decisions in the third quarter.
Based on these clues, we can determine that Berkshire sold hundreds of millions of shares of his two favorite stocks -- Apple (AAPL -0.33%) and Bank of America (BAC 8.43%) -- and piled into an ultra-safe asset yielding close to 5%.
Berkshire sold 334 million shares of Apple and Bank of America
How do people know that Berkshire sold all of these shares if we don't have its 13F filing? Berkshire's earnings reports detail the fair value of the company's five largest holdings in its stock portfolio, given their material impact on the equities portfolio and the company. You then can find the historical stock price on the last day of the quarter and calculate the share amount.
Here is where things stood at the end of the second quarter on June 30. (I'm using stock prices from June 28 because June 30 was a Sunday.) The numbers are in thousands: