Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, $257,100) has purchased 120 million shares of Apple (AAPL: $137) in 2017 and said that U.S. stocks were not in "bubble territory." This is new information, as previously he said that they owned 61 million shares.
"Apple strikes me as having quite a sticky product," Buffett said. He said Berkshire's Apple stake, at 133 million shares, was worth about $17 billion and amounted to Berkshire's second-biggest holding behind Burlington Northern.
Buffett, who supported Hillary Clinton, said he would judge U.S. President Donald Trump based on how safe the country is in four years. He said he would also judge him according to how the U.S. economy performs overall. Buffett said the U.S. economy would be better off in four years under any president. And he said that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made "a lot of sense."
BMR Take: Well, Buffett has finally come around. For a man who has never bought any Tech stocks, he has stepped up to the plate and hit it out of the park. We believe this to be the influence of the two former hedge-fund managers that he has hired in the past decade.
Apple is hovering at all-time highs, with over $250 billion in cash and a market cap of $720 billion. We would buy shares today – not 133 million shares – but as many as we could afford. We look for the company to reach our Target of $150 sometime this year.