Buffett Watch

• Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker

Billionaire Warren Buffett is a master when it comes to investing.

The Berkshire Hathaway CEO is famous for buying and holding stock — and not giving in to the volatility of the market.

He's also well-known for taking big stakes in companies, such as the $900 million worth of shares he has in Amazon.

His latest play: a $10 billion investment to back Occidental Petroleum's bid for Anadarko Petroleum. Berkshire Hathaway will make the investment by purchasing 100,000 shares of preferred stock, which pays out an 8% annual dividend.

Preferred shares are different from common stock, the one most people are familiar with. Both are equity in a company, but preferred stock typically pays a higher dividend. And that may be attractive in this current low-interest rate environment.

"Think of it as a hybrid security," said certified financial planner Colin Gerrety, client advisor at Glassman Wealth Services.

"It has some aspects similar to ordinary common stock," he added. "It also has some aspects of it that are more similar to a bond."

Networking. For some it's a pleasure, for others it's a chore, but for the vast majority it's a total waste of time.

That's because far too many of us ignore the most important part — the follow-up.

In fact, according to relationship strategist Zvi Band, those initial networking events are a pointless exercise if you don't see them as part of a longer, more strategic relationship building process.

"People going to networking events are seeking the same outcome as you — to meet people," Band told CNBC Make It.

"But remember, the hard work is not in the initial meeting or LinkedIn connection. It's recording your notes, following through on any action items, and keeping that relationship warm."

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway on Wednesday revealed in a government filing the size of its stake in e-commerce giant Amazon.

Berkshire's stake in Amazon was 483,300 shares at the end of the quarter ended March 31, according to a filing at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The value of that stake was $904 million by the closing bell Wednesday.

Despite the sizable headline figure, the position doesn't put Berkshire near the top of Amazon's biggest shareholder list. The stake represents about 0.1% of Amazon's outstanding equity.

Buffett first disclosed the new investment in Amazon to CNBC on May 2, a day before Berkshire's annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. The size of the position, however, had not previously been reported to the public.

The renowned value investor — though a fan of Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos — also told CNBC earlier this month that he isn't responsible for Berkshire's investment.

"One of the fellows in the office that manage money ... bought some Amazon, so it will show up in the 13F," Buffett said on May 2. Buffett was likely referring to one of his two lieutenants, Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, who each manage portfolios of more than $13 billion in equities for Berkshire.

"Yeah, I've been a fan, and I've been an idiot for not buying" Amazon shares, Buffett said at the time. "But I want you to know it's no personality changes taking place."

Amazon shares rose 0.1% in after-hours trading following the SEC filing.

Berkshire Hathaway's report also showed an 18% increase in its J.P. Morgan Chase stake to 59.5 million shares and a 22% increase to its Red Hat holdings to 5.1 million shares.

— CNBC's Becky Quick contributed to this report.

Tuesday, Mark Cuban spoke with CNBC's Scott Wapner and left open the possibility that he would run for President.

"It would take the perfect storm for me to do it. There's some things that could open the door, but I'm not projecting or predicting it right now," the billionaire entrepreneur told CNBC.

Yet whether or not he runs, by his own calculation, Cuban has already been of great service to his country — by creating and amassing wealth.

Mark Cuban grew up working class in Pittsburgh, but the tech entrepreneur is now worth $4.1 billion, according to Forbes. He's gotten rich, and that, he says, this is one of the most patriotic things anyone can do.

On Monday, Cuban shared a link to a blog post he wrote in 2011 called, "The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do."

"Bust your a-- and get rich," reads the first line of the post.

"Make a boatload of money. Pay your taxes. Lots of taxes. Hire people. Train people. Pay people. Spend money on rent, equipment, services. Pay more taxes," Cuban writes.

"When you make a sh--load of money, do something positive with it. If you are smart enough to make it, you will be smart enough to know where to put it to work," he says.

Cuban, who sold his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion in stock, now owns the Dallas Mavericks NBA team. The billionaire tweeted a link to his 2011 blog post in response to a tweet asking if the billionaire was "scared of paying higher taxes?"

TWEET

He is not.

"Profits equal tax money. While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes. I don't. I find it Patriotic," Cuban writes in the 2011 post. "Get out there and make a boatload of money. Enjoy the sh-- out your money. Pay your taxes. It's the most Patriotic thing you can do." (Cuban has since said that "after military service" paying taxes is the most patriotic thing you can do if you're wealthy.)

Cuban urges people to get so "obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your 2nd thought will be 'what a great problem to have,' and your 3rd should be a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you."

Cuban's tweet comes at a time when wealth inequality is frequent topic of discussion.

The combined fortunes of Amazon'sJeff Bezos, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett equals more money than the entire poorest half of the population in the United States has, according to an October report from progressive Washington, D.C.-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies.

And other billionaires have weighed in: Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio has said that capitalism is no longer working for most people. Gates and Buffett, on the other hand, see capitalism as the best system but believe the super rich should pay higher tax rates.

As for Cuban, he writes in 2011: "I don't care what anyone says. Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefiting you and your family, but in the broader sense. Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make the more of a financial impact you can have."

See also:

Warren Buffett: This is the best way to put cash in the pockets of people who need it

Billionaire 'Shark Tank' star Mark Cuban: This is how to know if a business will be successful

Mark Cuban, Scott Galloway, Mike Rowe all agree 'following your passion' is totally bogus advice

Billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has ended a difficult chapter in its investment in IBM while ramping up its stake in Apple.

CNBC's Becky Quick, in an interview from Omaha that aired Friday, asked him if Berkshire owns any IBM shares.

He said, "No."

"I think we have zero," he said.

"The answer is almost certain, yes," on Berkshire owning no more IBM shares, he said.

Achieving success and making tough decisions go hand in hand. So what's the best way to make ethical decisions during tough times?

That's a question one student asked Warren Buffett at a 2005 Q&A session with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

It all comes down to reputation, the billionaire told the audience. Integrity and ethics are essential for building a solid, positive reputation. They also indicate trust and adherence to high moral standards.

"We have all the money we need," Buffett said, referring to himself and Gates. "While we'd like to have more, we can afford to lose money. But we can't afford to lose reputation. Not a shred."

There are 2,604 billionaires in the world, and 55.8% of them are self-made.

That's according to the Billionaire Census published Thursday by market research firm Wealth-X.

Taken together, self-made billionaires have a total of nearly $5 trillion.

Another 30.9% of billionaires made at least some of their wealth themselves, according to the report, while 13.3% inherited their wealth entirely.

The data showed a "continuation of the long-term trend in the gradual increase in the proportion of self-made billionaires," says the report, which is based on Wealth-X's own proprietary data and intelligence from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2018. This was "despite a broad weakening of asset markets and more subdued global growth prospects," which the report says "highlights the growing importance of entrepreneurship in creating and preserving substantial wealth."

Source: Wealth-X

In fact, almost all of the current richest billionaires are self-made, from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world with a current net worth of more than $155 billion, according to Forbes, to Google co-founders Larry Page (more than $53 billion) and Sergey Brin (more than $52 billion), the 10th and 11th richest respectively, according to Forbes.

However, overall, the number of billionaires in the world and their collective wealth declined in 2018 compared to the year prior, according to Wealth-X.

The number of billionaires fell 150 from 2,754 in last year's report, and their total wealth fell from $9.2 trillion to $8.6 trillion. The draw down was due to "heightened market volatility, global trade tensions and a slowdown in economic growth," Wealth-X says.

Of course, even "self-made" billionaires did not succeed alone.

Bezos has said his own rocket-out-of-the-cannon success with Amazon would not have been possible without the technological advancements that set him up for success.

"I've witnessed this incredible thing happen on the internet over the last two decades. I started Amazon in my garage 24 years ago — drove packages to the post office myself. Today we have 600,000-plus people, millions and millions of customers, a very large company," Bezos said at the Yale Club in New York City in Feb., according to Business Insider.

Yep, that's me. I was lucky to be exposed to tech and coding at a young age. Inspired a lifelong love of invention. I hope the new Amazon Future Engineer program does the same for some kids today.

Bezos continued: "How did that happen in such a short period of time? It happened because we didn't have to do any of the heavy lifting. All of the heavy-lifting infrastructure was already in place for it. There was already a telecommunication network, which became the backbone of the internet. There was already a payment system — it was called the credit card. There was already a transportation network called the US Postal Service, and Royal Mail, and Deutsche Post, all over the world, that could deliver our packages."

At the same event, Bezos said the success of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also a direct function of the technological innovation that came before him: "An even more stark example is Facebook. Here's a guy who literally, in his dorm room, started a company — Mark Zuckerberg started a company in his dorm room, which is now worth half a trillion dollars — less than two decades ago," Bezos said.

Zuckerberg quite famously, started Facebook at Harvard in 2004.

Zuckerberg, the fifth richest person in the world with a more than $69 billion fortune, said himself in his 2017 Harvard commencement speech that some amount of his success is due to the freedoms afforded him by his affluent upbringing.

"We all know we don't succeed just by having a good idea or working hard. We succeed by being lucky, too. If I had to support my family growing up instead of having time to code, if I didn't know I'd be fine if Facebook didn't work out, I wouldn't be standing here today," Zuckerberg said in his speech. "If we're honest, we all know how much luck we've had."

Warren Buffett, who founded Berkshire Hathaway and is the fourth richest person in the world with a more than $85 billion net worth, has also spoken about the role luck has played in his success.

"My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. [Both] my children and I won what I call 'the ovarian lottery,'" Buffett told Christiane Amanpour in 2010. "I was born in the right country at the right time."

See also:

Sam Adams founder: Unless you're a sociopath, being happy is better than being rich

Instagram co-founder on selling to Facebook for $1 billion: 'Money itself is no end. It doesn't make you happy'

Pinterest's employee No. 2 left before his equity vested—here's what he says of the decision that cost him millions

Occidental Petroleum may have spoiled Chevron's plans to acquire oil and gas driller Anadarko Petroleum, but Wall Street is not pronouncing the oil company the loser in the buyout battle.

Several analysts are commending Chevron for declining to counter Occidental's $38 billion bid for Anadarko. Chevron not only walks away with a $1 billion breakup fee, but showed investors it won't sacrifice its budget sheet in a bidding war, the analysts say.

The San Ramon, California-based energy giant was under pressure to hike its original $65 per share offer into the $70s after the underdog Occidental sweetened its offer this week. For Occidental, funding a $76 per share bid relied in part on agreeing to a steep 8% annual payout to Warren Buffett in order to secure a $10 billion investment from the Oracle of Omaha.

Chevron said Thursday it will not submit a new offer to acquire Anadarko Petroleum, walking away from the deal after Occidental Petroleum pulled ahead in a battle to take control of the driller with prized assets in the top U.S. shale oil field.

The decision means Chevron will collect a $1 billion breakup fee, a windfall that it could use to purchase another driller in the Permian Basin, the engine of the American oil drilling boom.

Shares of the San Ramon, California-based oil major were up about 3% on Thursday.

Anadarko announced on Monday that its board had unanimously decided that Occidental's revised $38 billion bid was superior to a $33 billion Chevron buyout. Anadarko said it intended to break its agreement with Chevron and strike a deal with Occidental if Chevron did not submit a better offer.

Occidental, with backing from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, offered to pay 78% cash and 22% stock for Anadarko, while the Chevron transaction was structured as a 75% stock and 25% cash deal.

Occidental Petroleum's recent jaunt to Omaha aboard a corporate jet presaged a $10 billion investment from Warren Buffett, and now the plane has traveled to the hometown of oil major Royal Dutch Shell.

This comes as Occidental is trying to finalize a deal to buy Anadarko Petroleum, which has a joint venture with Shell in the Permian Basin, the engine of the U.S. shale oil boom. On Monday, Anadarko said it intends to cancel a $33 billion deal to sell its business to Chevron and instead sell its business to Occidental for $38 billion.

Occidental's Gulfstream V has traveled to Rotterdam The Hague Airport in the Netherlands and was on the tarmac on Wednesday, a source told CNBC.