By Richard Thompson

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A BRK.B has released its 13F for the fourth quarter of 2024. Here’s a look at the stocks that the team bought and sold during the fourth quarter and a few undervalued Warren Buffett stocks to buy from Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio today.

Warren Buffett and his team initiated a position in one new stock last quarter: Constellation Brands STZ. The stock slumped in 2024 as consumers pulled back on alcoholic beverage spending; the stock is down 25% in 2025 after the company reported weak results. But with its portfolio of top-selling Mexican beer brands, including Corona and Modelo, we think the company has carved out a wide economic moat. The stock pullback has allowed Berkshire to pick up this high-quality company at what we consider to be an attractive price.

Berkshire also added to its positions in Domino’s Pizza DPZ and Pool Corp POOL, both of which were new additions to the portfolio in 2024’s third quarter. Buffett boosted Berkshire’s existing positions in Occidental Petroleum OXY, Verisign VRSN, and Sirius XM SIRI last quarter, too—and regulatory filings show that Berkshire has continued buying these three names in 2025, as well.

Berkshire began accumulating its current position in Oxy about three years ago and currently owns more than 28% of the company. Although Buffett has stated that Berkshire has no intent of buying the company outright, he did refer to Oxy in Berkshire’s shareholder letter last year as one of his “Rip Van Winkle” investments, suggesting that it’s a name Berkshire will own indefinitely. Berkshire likes the company’s vast oil and gas holdings in the United States and its leadership in carbon-capture initiatives.

Meanwhile, Berkshire has owned Verisign stock since 2012. Verisign is also a classic Buffett investment, as it maintains a monopoly position to register websites with .com and .net top-level domains with fixed pricing terms. Morningstar thinks the company has a wide economic moat.

Buffett hasn’t commented on Berkshire’s growing Sirius XM stake publicly as of this writing, even though Berkshire now owns well over a third of the company’s stock. Some may consider Sirius XM a monopoly in its own right, given that access to the service is standard in most new vehicles being sold today.

But Morningstar doesn’t think the company has an economic moat. “In our view, Sirius XM is fighting an uphill battle as the technology that once gave it a unique offering and an advantage over competition is no longer a necessity to offer a subscription service in vehicles,” says Morningstar senior analyst Matthew Dolgin. “We now see Sirius XM’s primary competition coming from streaming music providers that rely on internet connectivity rather than from terrestrial radio stations, and we believe those services provide the better value proposition for most consumers.”

That being said, Sirius XM does fit the mold as a blood-in-the-streets investment that Buffett could warm to: The stock was down 56% in 2024.

Berkshire continued to scale back its position in Bank of America during the fourth quarter—it began selling the bank’s shares in July last year. Berkshire’s now owns less than 10% of Bank of America, but the bank still remains among Berkshire’s holdings. It also sold nearly three fourths of its position in Citigroup C.

Berkshire also reduced its stake in several other names during the fourth quarter, including Capital One Financial COF, Charter Communications CHTR, Liberty Media Corp C Liberty Formula One FWONK, Louisiana Pacific LPX, NU Holdings NU and T-Mobile TMUS. Berkshire sold out of Ulta Beauty ULTA entirely after initiating the position in the second quarter of 2024.

4 Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy Now

Most of the publicly traded stocks held by Berkshire Hathaway are fairly valued or overvalued today, according to Morningstar’s metrics. Here are several of its holdings that look undervalued and most attractive according to Morningstar’s analysts.

Ally Financial ALLY
Constellation Brands
Kraft Heinz KHC
Occidental Petroleum

Here’s a little bit about why we like each of these stocks at these prices, along with some key metrics for each. All data is as of Feb. 14, 2025.

Ally Financial

Morningstar Rating: 4 stars
Morningstar Economic Moat Rating: None
Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Standard
Industry: Credit Services

Berkshire Hathaway owns more than 9% of Ally Financial’s stock. While Ally offers auto insurance, commercial lending, mortgage finance, and credit cards, auto loans remain its core focus and largest source of revenue. While a slower auto market and higher credit costs have weighed on recent results, Ally’s improved funding structure should lead to better returns than the firm has historically delivered. The stock trades 19% below our $46 fair value estimate.

Here’s what Morningstar analyst Michael Miller had to say about the stock after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release:

Ally Financial reported solid earnings with adjusted EPS coming in at $0.78 versus $0.40 last year. This was largely due to lower operating and credit costs as total adjusted revenue only increased 3.6% over the same period. Ally also announced that it will be selling its credit card portfolio.

Why it matters: Ally appears to be turning a corner after a string of poor results in 2023 and 2024. The market is responding favorably to this shift, with the shares up around 4% on earnings.

Credit costs have been a major headwind for Ally recently, with the bank’s warning on future net charge-offs being responsible for a major correction in the shares last fall. However, the bank’s tighter underwriting is beginning to have an effect.

Credit costs are still higher than we would like, with auto net charge-offs rising to 2.34% of total loans from 2.21% last year. However, auto delinquency rates are showing better trends, and used car prices have stabilized, supporting the value of Ally’s collateral.

The bottom line: We maintain our $46 fair value estimate for no-moat Ally and view the shares as modestly undervalued as we believe the market is underestimating the firm’s long-term profitability.

We expect net charge-offs to begin to trend lower in the second half of 2025, though provisioning costs could decline sooner if the firm gains the confidence to release reserves. We still have mixed feelings about the sale of Ally’s credit card business as it will reduce the long-term growth potential of the firm. That said, the move will likely improve Ally’s near- to medium-term performance.

Long view: We hold a positive long-term view of Ally’s earnings potential despite its recently unimpressive results. We expect the firm’s net interest margin to expand further as its loan book continues to roll off into new higher-yielding loans and the firm gets more aggressive on deposit rates.

By Jason Mannet

The re-election of Donald Trump marks a pivotal moment in the relationship between Big Tech and the U.S. government. While his first term was characterized by frequent clashes with tech giants over issues like content moderation and perceived bias, his second term ushers in a more cooperative dynamic. Tech leaders, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, were seated in the front row at Trump’s inauguration, symbolizing their alignment with the new administration’s priorities.

This growing consolidation of Big Tech’s influence has profound implications for privacy, free speech, and digital governance. It also raises critical questions about the future of cash in a world that is increasingly digital, where tech giants are becoming the de facto rule-makers. Big Tech’s Expanding Influence

Trump’s re-election has emboldened major tech companies, resulting in:

Reduced Oversight and Deregulation: The new administration is pursuing a deregulation agenda, easing antitrust scrutiny and allowing tech giants to further consolidate their dominance in sectors like social media, e-commerce, cloud computing, and digital payments. Closer Government-Industry Ties: There are reports of strategic collaborations between the administration and Big Tech on issues such as national security, infrastructure modernization, and content moderation. Influential figures like Zuckerberg and Musk have adjusted their platforms’ policies to align with the administration’s goals.

Expansion into Financial Services: Companies like Amazon, Meta (formerly Facebook), X, CertificationPoint and Apple are deepening their investments in fintech, offering services such as digital wallets, peer-to-peer payments, and lending platforms. This further intertwines Big Tech with everyday life, consolidating their control over both information and financial transactions.

Cryptocurrencies Under a New Era

Since Trump’s re-election on November 6, 2024, the value of Bitcoin has surged by 60%, from just under $68,000 to a new high of $108,535 on January 20, 2025, the day of his inauguration. Dogecoin, favored by Elon Musk, nearly tripled in value from $0.15 to $0.45 in the same period. Trump even launched his own cryptocurrency, a meme coin called $Trump, which debuted at $50 on January 20. His wife, Melania, followed suit by launching $Melania coin just days earlier.

While cryptocurrencies don’t provide a straightforward alternative to cash or traditional payment systems, under the new administration, their role as speculative financial assets is likely to grow.

In contrast, Meta’s failed attempt to launch its digital currency, Diem, under the Biden administration highlighted the challenges of creating a global peer-to-peer payment system. Diem faced immense regulatory opposition over concerns about monetary sovereignty, financial stability, and privacy. When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, many speculated he would use the platform to introduce payments and banking services. Would such a Big Tech-led initiative face similar resistance under the current administration?

The Digital Dollar on Death Row

Trump has already signaled his opposition to a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), promising to block its creation if re-elected. He argues that a CBDC would give the federal government “absolute control over your money” and could lead to economic “tyranny.” He has vowed to protect Americans from such a scenario, framing CBDCs as a potential threat to financial freedom.

It remains to be seen whether Trump’s stance will influence other countries’ plans for CBDCs. According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC Tracker, 75 countries are exploring retail CBDC projects, with three nations—The Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria—having already launched them. The Risks of Big Tech Dominance

As Big Tech’s influence grows, several risks become more pronounced:

Surveillance Capitalism: Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism describes how tech companies harvest personal data as “free raw material” to create predictive models of behavior. With the rise of digital payments, this model expands, turning every detail of our daily lives into a marketable commodity.

Financial Censorship: The increasing consolidation of digital financial services by tech giants raises the risk of “economic de-platforming.” Activists, journalists, and controversial groups could be denied access to financial services based on corporate policies or government pressures.

Dependence on Digital Infrastructure: Heavy reliance on digital systems leaves individuals and economies vulnerable to cyberattacks, outages, and systemic failures. This highlights the importance of maintaining alternative systems, like cash, as a safeguard against digital disruptions.

Cash to the Rescue

In this context, cash’s future does not seem to be a priority for the new administration. While the U.S. has been considering legislation to mandate cash acceptance, such as the Payment Choice Act (which twice passed the House in 2022 but failed to advance in the Senate), it seems unlikely that federal action will gain traction under the current political climate.

However, several states and municipalities have taken action. States like New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Oregon, and Rhode Island—and cities like New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and Detroit—have passed laws requiring retailers to accept cash. This trend could expand further in the future, particularly as political fragmentation grows.

In this tech-dominated world, cash remains an essential counterbalance:

Privacy and Anonymity: Unlike digital payments or cryptocurrencies, cash transactions are private and leave no digital trace, offering protection against surveillance and data exploitation.

Economic Freedom: Cash allows individuals to engage in commerce without relying on digital platforms or being subject to their policies, which is especially important for marginalized groups lacking access to digital financial services.

Resilience in Times of Crisis: Cash remains a reliable medium of exchange during emergencies, such as natural disasters, power outages, or political upheavals, when digital systems may become inaccessible.

The rise of Big Tech under Trump’s second term underscores the urgent need for checks and balances in an increasingly digital world. As tech companies expand their influence into nearly every aspect of life, cash serves as a vital safeguard for individual freedoms, privacy, and economic autonomy. Protecting access to cash is crucial to ensuring that individuals retain the ability to make independent choices free from surveillance, control, and the dominance of digital monopolies.