2 Stocks Warren Buffett Is Selling That Wall Street Doesn’t Know About

Few investors attract as much attention on Wall Street as Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) Warren Buffett, the company’s CEO. Since taking the helm in 1965, the aptly named “Oracle of Omaha,” he has nearly doubled the benchmark’s annualized total return. S&P 500In total, Buffett oversaw a 5,174,441% gain in Berkshire’s Class A shares (BRK.A) as of the close on August 7.

Given How Warren Buffett Crushed the S&P 500It’s no surprise that investors are eagerly awaiting clues about what he and his team have been buying and selling.

Traditionally, these “clues” come in the form of a Filing of Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A 13F is a quarterly report that provides a look under the hood at what Wall Street’s smartest (and richest) money managers have been buying and selling. Berkshire’s 13F detailing its activity for the quarter ended June is expected to be released after the stock market closes on August 14.

But you don’t always have to wait for Berkshire’s 13F report to find out what the Oracle of Omaha and his chief investment advisers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, have been up to. Thanks to the company’s quarterly operating results, annual shareholder meeting and SEC Form 4 filings, we already know about three big deals that have been made.

Based on these various clues, which I’ll discuss in more detail in a moment, I believe Buffett is selling two additional stocks that Wall Street and investors don’t yet know about.

Warren Buffett has been a major net seller of stocks

One stock we know for sure the Oracle of Omaha dumped is Berkshire Hathaway’s longtime largest holding, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Based on fair value estimates for Apple (as of June 30), which were highlighted in Berkshire’s second-quarter operating results, we can estimate that nearly half of the 789.37 million shares held as of March 31 were sold over the next three months.

At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting in early May, Buffett suggested that corporate tax rates were likely to rise in the coming years. Given the considerable unrealized investment gains that Apple Berkshire’s investment team is sitting on, Buffett reasoned that locking in some gains now, at a lower tax rate, would, in hindsight, be viewed favorably by the investment community.

Berkshire’s annual meeting also highlighted another widely reported move. Buffett admitted that he — and he alone — had sold his company’s entire remaining stake in the traditional media company. Paramount Global (NASDAQ: FOR)The remaining stake amounted to 7,531,765 shares as of March 31.

The story continues

Traditional media companies like Paramount have been upended by streaming services and the high costs associated with building the content libraries needed to compete for subscribers. Despite narrowing its losses in the direct-to-consumer segment, Paramount has…