When a storied investor like Warren Buffett is dumping what the Street is pumping, it’s never a good sign.
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens of Wall Street on Parade.
At his press conference on June 10 of this year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said this about the U.S. banking system, which includes a little more than 5,000 federally insured banks but is dangerously concentrated in the hands of just five mega banks on Wall Street.
“You have a banking system that is so much better capitalized, so much stronger, better aware of its risks, better at managing its risks, more highly liquid. You have all of those things and they’ve been lending, they’ve been taking in deposits, they’ve been a source of strength in this situation.”
Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is apparently not buying the story that Powell is attempting to sell to the public. According to Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the quarter ending June 30, 2020, Buffett dumped 35.5 million shares of JPMorgan Chase or 61.5 percent of his 57.7 million share holding in the bank.
Buffett also dumped the remainder of his position in Goldman Sachs, which amounted to 1.9 million shares. Buffett had already exited 84 percent of his shares of Goldman Sachs in the first quarter of the year.
Making Buffett’s massive dump of JPMorgan Chase even more embarrassing was the headline in Barron’s on January 3 of this year which blared: Why Warren Buffett Loves JPMorgan Chase Stock. Equally untimely, a well-known Wall Street bank analyst, Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo, reiterated his buy rating on JPMorgan Chase on March 31.
According to MarketBeat, 15 Wall Street analysts have buy ratings on the stock of JPMorgan Chase. Goldman Sachs issued a buy rating on JPMorgan Chase on July 24.
When a storied investor like Warren Buffett is dumping what the Street is pumping, it’s never a good sign…