market folly

Warren Buffett's conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway has filed a Form 3 and Form 4 with the SEC.  Per the filing, Berkshire now owns over 57.9 million shares of Phillips 66 (PSX).

Berkshire was out buying on August 26th - 28th at prices between $71.56 and $77.26.  In total, they bought over 3.17 million shares over those three days.  They now own over 10% of the company with a stake worth over $4.4 billion.

However, they had to have also acquired a ton of shares prior to that.  As the brand new issue of our Hedge Fund Wisdom newsletter flagged 10 days ago, Buffett requested confidential treatment with the SEC regarding one of his holdings for his Q2 13F filing.  PSX did not appear in his holdings list at that time so it looks like this could be the position he was requesting privacy on.

Back in the first quarter of this year, Buffett owned just 7.49 million PSX shares.  So basically between April 1st and August 28th, Berkshire ramped up its exposure to PSX in a big way.  Shares largely traded sideways over that timeframe, between $75 and $84.  During the recent market turmoil, however, they traded as low as $69.79.

Buffett has been busy lately, as he's also agreed to takeover Precision Castparts (PCP).

For more on Buffett's firm, be sure to also check out our analysis of Axalta Coating Systems (AXTA), another stock Berkshire bought in recent months.