Warren Buffett's Portfolio: How to Read Berkshire's 13F
By Chad Hartman
Published · Last updated
Warren Buffett's portfolio isn't a secret. It's public record, filed with the SEC every quarter, and available to anyone willing to read a Form 13F. What's actually hard isn't finding the filing — it's reading it correctly, because the way financial media covers it strips out nearly every detail that makes it useful and leaves behind a headline ("Buffett buys X," "Berkshire trims Y") that a 13F alone can't fully support.
This guide covers what Berkshire Hathaway's 13F actually discloses, the specific limitations that make headline coverage misleading, how to read a position change the way the filing actually supports, and — using the actual Q2 2026 filing — exactly what Berkshire's disclosed portfolio holds today. (Its largest position, Apple, alone accounts for just over a fifth of the entire disclosed portfolio — a position that large moves the portfolio's reported value with every swing in the stock, independent of whether Berkshire has traded a single share.)
Table of Contents
- What a 13F Actually Discloses
- What Berkshire Actually Holds (Q2 2026 13F)
- The 45-Day Lag Problem
- What the Filing Can't Tell You
- How to Read a Position Change Correctly
- Why Concentration Matters More Than Any Single Holding
- Tracking Any 13F Filer on GeminIQ
- Frequently Asked Questions
What a 13F Actually Discloses
Form 13F is a quarterly filing required of any institutional investment manager overseeing more than $100 million in qualifying securities, and Berkshire Hathaway — as the manager of its own equity portfolio — has filed one every quarter for decades. The filing lists each U.S.-listed equity position the manager holds at quarter-end: the company, the number of shares, and the market value at that date.
That's the entire scope. It's a snapshot of long equity holdings in U.S.-traded securities, filed once per quarter, nothing more. For the full mechanics of what a 13F requires and how the reporting threshold works, see our guide on institutional ownership and 13F filings.
What Berkshire Actually Holds (Q2 2026 13F)
Berkshire's 13F-HR for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 — filed August 14, 2026, signed by Vice Chairman Marc D. Hamburg — reported 29 distinct positions across its disclosed U.S. equity portfolio, worth $299.25 Billion in aggregate at quarter-end prices. Here is the full ranked list:
| Rank | Company | Value | % of Portfolio |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apple | $65.95 Billion | 22.04% |
| 2 | American Express | $51.28 Billion | 17.14% |
| 3 | Coca-Cola | $32.51 Billion | 10.86% |
| 4 | Alphabet (Class A) | $28.16 Billion | 9.41% |
| 5 | Bank of America | $27.54 Billion | 9.20% |
| 6 | Chevron | $13.99 Billion | 4.67% |
| 7 | Occidental Petroleum | $12.87 Billion | 4.30% |
| 8 | Chubb | $11.67 Billion | 3.90% |
| 9 | Moody's | $11.17 Billion | 3.73% |
| 10 | Alphabet (Class C) | $9.61 Billion | 3.21% |
Remaining 19 positions — Kraft Heinz, DaVita, Delta Air Lines, SiriusXM, Verisign, Kroger, Ally Financial, Lennar, Liberty Live Holdings, and others — together make up the remaining 11.5% of the portfolio.
A few things worth reading directly off this table rather than trusting a secondhand summary. Apple is the largest position by a wide margin, at just over a fifth of the entire disclosed portfolio — confirming the point made earlier about how much a single holding this size moves the reported total on price movement alone. Alphabet appears twice, as Class A and Class C shares (different CUSIPs, same underlying company); combined, the two classes total $37.76 Billion, or 12.62% — enough to rank as Berkshire's third-largest position on a combined basis, ahead of Coca-Cola. And the concentration is severe even by Berkshire's own standards: the top 5 positions account for 68.7% of the entire disclosed portfolio, and the top 10 account for 88.5% — against our 13F concentration framework, that's a manager making a small number of very large bets, not spreading risk across dozens of moderate ones.
None of this is a static fact. It's a photograph of one specific date, already six weeks old by its public filing date and older still by the time you're reading this — which is exactly why the next section matters.
The 45-Day Lag Problem
A 13F is due no later than 45 days after the quarter it covers ends — meaning a position disclosed in a Q1 filing, submitted in mid-May, reflects where the portfolio stood on March 31, not where it stands the day the filing becomes public. By the time anyone reads "Berkshire bought X," the position could already be six weeks larger, six weeks smaller, or gone entirely.
This lag is the single most under-discussed limitation of 13F-based coverage, and it's why treating a 13F headline as current, actionable information about what a fund is doing right now is a category error the filing itself warns against, just not in language most readers stop to notice.
What the Filing Can't Tell You
A handful of specific gaps matter more for Berkshire's filing than most, given how the market reads it:
No short positions and no derivatives. A 13F discloses long equity holdings only. Any hedge, short position, or options strategy layered around a disclosed position is invisible — the filing shows the long stock, not the full risk picture around it.
No non-U.S. holdings. Foreign-listed equities that don't trade as U.S.-listed securities or ADRs don't appear, regardless of size or conviction.
No timing within the quarter. A position that was built entirely in the first week of the quarter and one built entirely in the last week both show up identically as of quarter-end — the filing can't distinguish a decisive early conviction buy from a late, tentative toe-in.
No context for the decision. The filing shows what changed, never why. A trimmed position could reflect a change in thesis, a portfolio-level rebalancing unrelated to the stock itself, or simply a need to fund a larger purchase elsewhere.
How to Read a Position Change Correctly
The mechanically correct way to read any 13F — Berkshire's included — is to compare the current filing against the prior quarter's filing for the same manager and look at the shares-held delta, not the headline. A "new position" means the manager held zero shares last quarter and some positive number this quarter. An "increased position" is a share count that rose. A position that disappears entirely between filings was fully exited sometime in that quarter — but again, without visibility into exactly when.
The number of shares is the reliable figure to compare, not the reported market value, because market value moves with the stock price even when the manager makes no trade at all — comparing quarter-over-quarter dollar values without checking whether the share count actually changed will misread ordinary price movement as a trading decision.
Why Concentration Matters More Than Any Single Holding
Berkshire's 13F is unusually concentrated relative to the typical institutional filer — as the table above shows, 29 positions total, with the top 5 alone accounting for 68.7% of the disclosed portfolio and the top 10 for 88.5%. That's a pattern consistent with a genuine high-conviction approach rather than an index-tracking mandate, where a manager holding hundreds of positions in roughly market-cap-weighted proportions is making a fundamentally different kind of statement than one willing to put nearly a fifth of the portfolio in a single name. Our guide on 13F portfolio concentration covers how to calculate that ratio and what threshold separates genuine conviction from index-hugging noise, across the full universe of 13F filers, not just Berkshire.
Tracking Any 13F Filer on GeminIQ
Rather than reading a 13F filer's holdings in isolation, the more useful question for an individual stock you already follow is the reverse: which institutional holders — Berkshire included — appear in a given company's ownership base, and how has that holder count changed. GeminIQ's Institutional Ownership feature shows exactly this for any covered company, built from the as-filed 13F data rather than a delayed aggregator feed, so a rising or falling institutional holder count is visible on the same page as the company's own financial statements — letting you check whether a change in institutional interest lines up with anything happening in the underlying business.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often does Warren Buffett's 13F get updated?
Quarterly. Berkshire Hathaway, like every institutional manager overseeing more than $100 million in qualifying securities, must file a 13F no later than 45 days after each calendar quarter ends — meaning four snapshots a year, each already six-to-seven weeks old by the time it's public.
Does Warren Buffett's 13F show everything Berkshire owns?
No. It shows only long positions in U.S.-listed equity securities as of the quarter-end snapshot date. It excludes short positions, derivatives, non-U.S.-listed holdings, Berkshire's wholly-owned operating businesses, and any timing detail about when during the quarter a position was built or trimmed.
Why does 13F data lag by 45 days?
The SEC's filing deadline for Form 13F is 45 calendar days after the end of each quarter, giving institutional managers time to compile and certify their holdings. There's no faster public disclosure mechanism for this data — real-time institutional position data for most managers simply doesn't exist as a public filing.
Is a new position in a 13F always a bullish signal?
It confirms a manager held shares at quarter-end that it didn't hold the prior quarter — nothing more specific than that. Without knowing when in the quarter the position was built, at what price, or whether it's since been trimmed in the following quarter, a single new position is directional information, not a complete trading signal.
What is Warren Buffett's largest stock holding?
As of Berkshire Hathaway's 13F-HR for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 14, 2026), Apple was the largest disclosed position at $65.95 Billion, representing 22.04% of the portfolio's total reported value. This is a single quarterly snapshot, already dated by the time it was public — check GeminIQ's Institutional Ownership feature or a fresh 13F filing for the current figure.
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- Learn to separate conviction signal from index-tracking noise in 13F data
- Read Form 4 the same way — insider transactions, not institutional ones
Holdings data in this article references Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Form 13F-HR for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 14, 2026). All SEC filings are publicly available at SEC EDGAR.
Disclaimer: The content in this blog is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. The views expressed are my own and not intended as financial advice or a guarantee of future performance.