market folly

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has sold shares of Moody's (MCO) for the sixth time since July. We've covered Buffett's previous sales and now Berkshire has sold 87,992 shares on December 18th at a price of $26.77 per share. While they've been selling numerous times this year, they still remain Moody's largest shareholder and still own 31,814,610 shares. Berkshire sold shares in early December, previously sold Moody's shares in late October, and in months prior as well.

It has become clear that Buffett at the very least wants to reduce the size of his position. However, some will ponder whether or not Buffett will completely sell out of the name given the frequency of his sales thus far. Unfortunately we'll have to wait and see for the verdict on that one. Given that Buffett has been selling every time Moody's shares reach the mid-to-high 20's, he could potentially just be looking for the right price. Someone who will undoubtedly be fond of these developments is David Einhorn. His hedge fund Greenlight Capital has been publicly short Moody's (MCO) as well as McGraw Hill (MHP) in a bet against the ratings agencies. You can see Einhorn's short thesis in his presentation on the curse of the Triple-A.

Taken from Google Finance, Moody's is "a provider of credit ratings and related research, data and analytical tools, quantitative credit risk measures, risk scoring software, and credit portfolio management solutions and securities pricing software and valuation models. The Company operates in two segments: Moody’s Investors Service (MIS) and Moody’s Analytics (MA)."