Buffett's Berkshire Sells Most of J&J and GE Stakes

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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has eliminated almost all of its stakes in Johnson & Johnson and General Electric.

According to Berkshire's 13-F filing with the SEC, the company held just over 492-thousand shares of J&J as of September 30. That's a 95 percent reduction from the 10.3 million shares it reported holding as of June 30. The market value of the remaining holdings is just $34 million, down $682 million.

(Read more: Warren Buffett Buys This With His Billions .. And It Makes Him Happy)

Berkshire's GE stock has been slashed to 588,900 shares. That's down 88 percent from just over five million shares three months earlier. That stake is now worth just under $12 million, down $88.4 million.

Three relatively small holdings were eliminated during the quarter:

• Ingersoll-Rand
  20,400 shares worth about $923,000
  
  
• Dollar General
  3,320,885 shares worth $157 million
  
  
• CVS Caremark
  ,301,916 shares worth $241 million
  
  

A few stocks were added to Berkshire's portfolio during the third quarter, but they all appear to have been purchased by one of Berkshire's new portfolio managers, Todd Combs or Ted Weschler. Their buying and selling decisions usually involve hundreds of millions of dollars of stock or less. When the stakes get above $1 billion, it's a sign Buffett himself was involved.

The biggest addition is Deere & CO. with almost 4 million shares worth $337 million.

The filing also shows Berkshire owned 1,248,901 shares of Precision Castparts at the end of the quarter. That stake is currently worth $216 million,

The smallest addition is Wabco Holdings with almost 1.6 million shares worth $92 million.

Increased Stakes

• General Motors
  Up 5,000,000 shares to 15,000,000. ( 50%)
  
  
• National Oilwell Varco
  Up 1,345,600 shares to 4,186,800. ( 47%)
  
  
• Viacom
  Up 794,000 shares to 7,607,200. ( 12%)
  
  
• Bank of New York Mellon
  Up 914,400 shares to 19,633,915 ( 5%)
  
  
• DirecTV
  Up 1,134,9000 shares to 29,555,600 ( 4%)
  
  
• Wells Fargo
  Up 11,504,300 shares to 422,549,545 ( 3%)
  
  
• IBM
  Up 872,500 shares to 67,517,896 ( 1%)
  

Decreased Stakes

• United Parcel Service
  Down 202,500 shares to 59,400 (-77%)
  
  
• Lee Enterprises
  Down 2,095,102 shares to 1,130,720 (-65%)
  
  
• Kraft Foods Inc. (Pre-Spinoff)
  Down 28,362,040 shares to 30,464,350 (-48%)
  
  
• Visa
  Down 524,200 shares to 1,555,459 (-25%)
  
  
• Verisk Analytics
  Down 308,437 shares to 1,563,434 (-16%)
  
  
• ConocoPhillips
  Down 4,744,726 shares to 24,123,911 (-16%)
  
  
• Procter & Gamble
  Down 6,809,125 shares to 52,793,078 (-11%)
  
  
• US Bancorp
  Down 4,736,112 shares to 61,264,601 (-7%)
  

The filing shows that Berkshire now owns 400 million shares of Coca-Cola instead of the 200 million listed as of June 30. That increase, however, is the result of a two-for-one stock split during the quarter, and doesn't represent new buying.

The total value of Berkshire's reported U.S. stock portfolio was $75.3 billion as of September 30, up from $74.3 billion at the end of June.

Current Berkshire stock prices:

Class B:

Class A:

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