Berkshire's Paper Losses and Real Trades: What the Filings Actually Show
Published on 11/03/2026 at 17:01 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Berkshire Hathaway's stock drew buyers on Monday while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq slipped — a divergence that media coverage could not tie to any company announcement or other clearly identified catalyst. That absence of a confirmed trigger is the thread running through two separate Berkshire stories this week: a documented portfolio adjustment and an unconfirmed paper loss on Alphabet.
A Form 4, Not a Strategy Statement
On October 27, Berkshire sold 382,563 DaVita shares at $180.43 apiece, a transaction disclosed in a Form 4 filing with the SEC submitted on Thursday. The filing documents the trade and nothing more. It does not explain the thinking behind the trim, nor does it say anything about where the stake goes from here — and it certainly does not account for the share-price move. Reading a broad repositioning into a single sale would be a stretch.
The other side of the ledger points in a different direction. Roughly three weeks ago, Berkshire put another $330 million into Bending Spoons, lifting its total commitment to the Milan-based technology company to $930 million and its stake to 4%. A sale and a fresh investment, taken together, show case-by-case decisions inside the portfolio — concrete corporate events, but not evidence that investors were buying Berkshire shares because of them.
The Alphabet Question Has No Confirmed Answer
Separately, Barron's used the recent pullback in Alphabet to question Berkshire's stock-picking. A book loss is possible, but it is not confirmed: Berkshire has never disclosed its actual average cost basis.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Berkshire Hathaway?
What is known: Berkshire held 106 million Alphabet shares as of June 30. After the recent decline, that block was worth roughly $29.47 billion yesterday, down from more than $37 billion at times in June. A lower market value, on its own, does not establish a loss against purchase price — that requires knowing what Berkshire paid on average across all the shares, and that figure is missing.
Barron's estimates the average cost at probably above $300 per share, possibly near $320. That makes a paper loss plausible, but an estimate is not a confirmed accounting of acquisition costs. Because the position was built over several buying phases, the success of the whole investment cannot be judged from any single transaction's price — and a possible paper loss is not the same thing as a realized loss on a sale.
Earnings Miss, Operating Strength
The debate was set off by Alphabet's third-quarter 2026 results. Earnings per share came in at $2.12, down from $2.87 a year earlier and short of the roughly $3 analysts had expected. The miss did not come with a decline in operating profit; charges tied to equity holdings and heavy investment instead muddy the picture on earnings quality.
Operating income rose 30% year over year to $40.58 billion. Free cash flow, by contrast, stood at minus $9 billion, which Alphabet attributed to spending on artificial intelligence. Two trends therefore sit side by side for Berkshire: the operating business of its holding is growing, while the build-out of AI infrastructure consumes substantial capital. The share-price decline weighs on the value of the stake either way.
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The Analyst View Predates the Debate
UBS's Brian Meredith confirmed a buy rating on October 22 and raised his price target on the B-shares to $628 from $604, according to media reports. That call is a forecast, not a reported business result — and it was issued before the current discussion of possible Alphabet losses. On the accounting side, the timing matters too: price declines after the end of September are likely to show up only in fourth-quarter figures.
Berkshire's next scheduled report lands on November 7, when it plans to publish third-quarter 2026 results. Until then, the distinction holds: the portfolio transactions are documented, the drop in the Alphabet block's value is quantified, and a loss against the true cost basis remains unconfirmed — as does any explanation for the stock's recent relative strength, beyond profit-estimate revisions cited merely as a general influence.
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