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Warren Buffett’s famed stock portfolio has grown to a market value of $281.17 billion at the end of 2020, with a cumulative actual price for the entire portfolio of $108.62 billion. Last year, Berkshire earned $4.9 billion in realized capital gains and $26.7 billion in net unrealized gains from its stock holdings. In Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) shareholders, the renowned stock picker shared the 15 common stocks that had the largest market value at the end of 2020. Berkshire owns large stakes in companies like AbbVie (ABBV), American Express (AXP), Apple (AAPL), Bank of America (BAC),...

When he takes the oath of office Friday, President-elect Donald Trump will carry with him a massive web of potential conflicts of interest not seen in modern American history. The next president's ethical quandary is the result of his refusal to divest himself of a sprawling network of more than 500 properties that he has amassed in more than three decades as a celebrity entrepreneur. At a long-awaited news conference last week, Trump dismissed the potential conflicts after his attorney laid out the broad outlines of a plan to separate himself from the day-to-day operations of his businesses. The plan...

Just in time for the end of QE2, when the US needs every possible foreign buyer of US debt to step up to the plate, we get confirmation that yet another major foreign central bank has decided to not only not add to its US debt holdings, but to actively sell US Treasurys. The WSJ reports that "Russia will likely continue lowering its U.S. debt holdings as Washington struggles to contain a budget deficit and bolster a tepid economic recovery, a top aide to President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday. "The share of our portfolio in U.S. instruments has gone down...

Summary of key points: European banks own 8 trillion US assets (treasuries, agencies, consumer loans, etc…) and they are losing access to their dollar funding. If European banks are forced to sell their US assets, it will crash the credit markets, and they will have to recognize enormous losses. Since the fed is desperate to prevent the collapse of the US financial system, it lent those European banks 600 billion dollars so that they wouldn’t be forced to sell. Meanwhile, European banks accepted this 600 billion because they don’t want to recognize losses on their toxic US securities. What is...

Four years ago, when the foreign-exchange reserves of China totaled about $450 billion and the value of China's holdings of U.S. securities was about $300 billion, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned about the emergence of a global "balance of financial terror." Mr. Summers and others worry that U.S. consumption and investment levels are becoming dependent on "the discretionary acts" of other governments. Foreign governments and investors are accumulating huge pools of dollars by virtue of the massive trade deficits the United States has been running. What these governments decide to do with their rapidly growing dollar reserves could have...

WASHINGTON: Presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards, who have spoken out about genocide in Darfur, did not know their financial holdings included investments in companies that do business in Sudan, aides said. An Edwards campaign spokesman said Thursday that the former Democratic senator would sell thousands of dollars of Sudan-related funds. "He did not know about it and will divest," Eric Schultz said following inquires about Edwards' portfolio. Giuliani, the Republican former mayor of New York, has at least one investment of between $500,000 (€370,000) and $1 million (€740,000) in a fund that holds stock in a company that...

Fearing they could set an unwelcome precedent, trustees of the California State Teachers' Retirement System on Thursday rejected a call to shed holdings in PetroChina Co. The decision deals a setback to CalSTRS trustee and state Treasurer Phil Angelides, who pushed for divestment, arguing the fund faced "unwarranted risk" because of the government-controlled Chinese oil company's business ties in strife-torn Sudan and environmental disaster in northeastern China. CalSTRS, the nation's second largest public pension fund with $137.1 billion in assets, owns 19.9 million shares of PetroChina, worth about $15.5 million. Trustees also signaled little immediate interest in divesting investments in...

HOW GOOD IS THE DOLLAR?Feb 11, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.comby staff reportsAt the recent International Center for Economic Growth (ICEG) annual get together in Davos, Switzerland, speakers from various countries commented on global warming, politics, economics and foreign currency relationships. Bill Bonner of the Daily Reckoning notes Fan Gan, a mid-level government official from China had some stark opinions about his government’s lost faith in the dollar. Fan remarked. "The U.S. dollar is no longer (seen) as a stable currency.” He sees his country moving away from having so much of its holdings in dollars. Bonner remarks, “As to why China...

Ten of the 29 directors of California's new stem cell program serve on biotech or pharmaceutical firms' boards of directors or have extensive holdings in those industries, leading critics to challenge their ability to fairly represent taxpayers in doling out $3 billion in state funds. Members of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, created by voter passage of the stem cell initiative in November, reported interests ranging from real estate to movie production in statements of economic interest filed this week. Six members, including Sacramento physician Francisco Prieto and University of California, Davis, medical school head Claire Pomeroy, had no reportable...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

John Kerry's family dumped millions of dollars of foreign holdings as he launched his White House bid, gobbling up Made in the USA stocks in a huge politically savvy international-to-domestic shift. The investments, mostly in the name of Kerry's multimillionaire wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, sold stock in massive overseas players like Heineken, Sony, British Petroleum and Italian Telecom for red, white and blue companies like McDonald's, Dell and Kohls. In all, the Kerrys dumped as much as $16 million worth of international stock and bought between $18 million and $32 million in domestic holdings between 2002 and 2003, records show....

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered a review of state property and the way it's managed, saying the current system is disjointed. The Republican governor issued an executive order on Wednesday directing state departments and agencies to catalogue property they control, evaluate the need to keep that property and report any property they consider surplus. Schwarzenegger said he wanted officials to identify "potentially high-value urban properties" owned by the state that may "warrant realignment or disposal." He also directed the Department of General Services and two other agencies to recommend ways to improve the management of state holdings....

<p>September 8, 2002 -- For a man whose political future is so ambiguous, Yasser Arafat's finances seem equally confused among a hodgepodge of holdings that may be worth as much as $1.3 billion.</p> <p>According to Bloomberg Markets magazine, the man appointed to sort things out, former International Monetary Fund official Salam Fayyad, has a colossal job ahead of him.</p>