Scraping together enough coin to win the annual luncheon auction with Warren Buffett is probably beyond most investors' means. With the proceeds going to charity, this year's winning bidder forked over $2.63 million for the privilege.
While we can't afford to break bread with the greats, we can peek at their stock ideas through their SEC filings. Here, we'll pore over the reports of some of the top investors, and see which stocks they've chosen as their best investments. We'll then check in with Motley Fool CAPS members to see whether they agree.
First, a few caveats...
- There's a delay between when the stocks were bought and when these investors filed their paperwork, so they might have sold out since.
- While these legends may be hot investors now, that can change in an instant. Bill Miller was a wunderkind for beating the market 15 years in a row -- until he went cold for three. He came back in 2009, but we don't know what 2010 will bring.
Given these pitfalls, prudent Fools should consider the stocks we'll highlight merely ideas for their own further research.
Contrary to popular opinion
Today, we'll focus on one name not usually associated with investing: Microsoft
- Fund: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust
- No. of Stocks Owned: 29
- Top 5 Holdings: Berkshire Hathaway, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, Waste Management
- Top Sectors: Financials, Consumer Services, Industrials
Like a number of the investing legends we've looked at, Gates has a concentrated portfolio, but it's probably as notable for its absence of any investment in Microsoft. The Trust added only one new stock in the period, online travel agent Expedia
Price is what you pay
Like priceline.com
Although Google's announcement initially sent shares of priceline, Expedia, and Orbitz lower, it's not clear that this move will truly have a bad outcome for online travel agencies.
Google generates 10% of its travel revenue from travel search, according to analyst estimates at JPMorgan. The search company will likely be able to monetize its search capabilities even further by pushing ads to those results. Google probably posed a bigger threat to online travel agents with its earlier experiment to publish the actual price of hotel room rates on its search results page, and with its City Tours itinerary-generation application.
There doesn't seem to be any threat at the moment to Expedia or priceline, now that Google is running the show. Without even having to build a booking service on its own, Google can now realize a lucrative trade from its search strength. And with relevant ads pointing the way, the big G might just end up pushing more business to online travel agents.
The CAPS community is currently still on board with Expedia; three-quarters of those rating the OTA believe it will outperform the broad market averages. That's the same percentage backing priceline.com, while 71% back Orbitz.
As CAPS All-Star wuff3t noted in reference to priceline's position:
Beaten down too far and plenty of room for growth in Europe and Asia. People are once again behaving as though the entire world is going into permanent decline; it isn't, it's just going through the down part of a cycle. Good companies will make you money in the long run if you trust them...
Value is what you get
Become an investing legend yourself -- start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made, all from a stock's CAPS page.
Sign up today for this completely free service, and tell us whether these stocks are as good a value as the investing legends think they are.
