| Buffett: We had no inside knowledge about bid for Activision In an unusual move for him, Warren Buffett wrote to three news organizations that ran stories highlighting what appeared to be Berkshire Hathaway's very profitable purchase of Activision Blizzard stock just before it rallied sharply last month when Microsoft revealed plans to buy the video game maker at a large premium to its market price.
He then had that letter posted on Berkshire's web site.
The timing of what would be an unusual move for Buffett, and The Wall Street Journal's initial report, later corrected, that the stake was bought at roughly $66.53 a share, well below the $95 per share Microsoft is paying, suggested to some that Buffett might have known the bid was in the works.
The New York Post wrote, "The timing of the acquisition could raise eyebrows given Buffett's decades-long friendship with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates."
Similarly, Fortune said in its piece that "Buffett's longstanding ties with Microsoft and its cofounder Bill Gates have raised eyebrows."  But in his letter, Buffett writes that the purchases were made by one of the two investment managers at Berkshire "who operate independently of me" and that "it was about three months after our manager's first purchase that Microsoft announced its acquisition proposal of which Berkshire had no prior knowledge."
In addition, Buffett says 85% of the position was purchased in October, with an overall average cost of $77.
Activision shares hit a 52-week low of $56.40 after a sell-off prompted by the Journal's mid-November report that CEO Bobby Kotick "knew for years about sexual-misconduct allegations" at the company.
It was that price drop that reportedly prompted Microsoft to begin takeover talks with Activision. Buffett says that the timing means the purchase "was no bonanza of any sort," and "could have been replicated after the Microsoft proposal was announced at a price of $78 or so."
While Microsoft's move prompted a roughly 25% rally for the stock, it's been trading in a range of around $79 to $82, well below the $95 bid, amid concerns regulators may try to block the deal.
At today's close of $81.05, Berkshire's 14.7 million shares are worth around $1.19 billion. That's about $59 million more than the $1.13 billion it paid, a gain of 5.3%.
Berkshire was net seller of stocks in fourth quarter The new Activision stake was revealed in this week's 13F SEC filing from Berkshire that listed the publicly traded U.S. stocks it owned as of December 31.
Nu Holdings, the parent of Brazilian digital bank Nubank, also appears for the first time in a Berkshire 13F, although we already suspected it owned around 100 million shares, based on a pre-IPO investment of $500 million and a reported purchase of 10% of the IPO itself.
Even so, the stock gained more than 13% in the four trading day's following Berkshire's filing.  Berkshire also increased its stake in Chevron by around a third to 38.2 million shares during the fourth quarter. They're currently worth $5.1 billion, making Chevron Berkshire's ninth largest U.S. equity holding.
Even with the Q4 increase, Berkshire's stake is around 10 million shares smaller than what it held when the holding was first revealed a year ago, due to the sale of 24.8 million shares in 2021's first quarter.
The original 48.5 million shares would be worth almost $6.5 billion at today's price.
Berkshire's roughly $3.5 billion in stock purchases (based on end-of-quarter prices) was outweighed by $4.4 billion in sales.
They include a 79% cut in its AbbVie stake ($1.5 billion) and a 76% reduction in its holdings of Bristol-Myers Squibb ($1.1 billion).
Munger hates gambling and crypto, likes China, and is skeptical of doomsday climate change predictions Charlie Munger had some strong words on some of his favorite themes at the Daily Journal shareholders meeting on Wednesday. (He is the chairman of the company's board.)
He compared meme-stock trading to a "drunken brawl," and said that if was in charge he would impose a tax on short-term gains to discourage "gambling" and reduce liquidity, which he thinks creates "wretched excess and danger for the country."
Munger repeated his contempt for cryptocurrencies, saying "it's like some venereal disease" that is "beneath contempt."
On Thursday's "Squawk Box," Becky Quick played clips in which Munger said the U.S. should be less critical of China because "they do some things better than we do," and predicted climate change won't be as bad "as these calamity howlers are saying."
Tom Murphy resigns from Berkshire board after almost 20 years Tom Murphy, Warren Buffett's longtime friend who "taught me more about running a business than any other person," resigned from Berkshire Hathaway's board of directors after serving on it since 2003.
In a news release, Buffett says Murphy, who will be 97 years old in May, called him Monday and said that "recovering from a recent bout with Covid convinced him that he would feel more comfortable ending his activities at Berkshire."
Buffett first met Murphy in the late 1960s when he was running Capital Cities Communications.
"We have been friends and mental partners for more than 50 years. My only regret is that I didn't meet him earlier."
In a 2018 CNBC interview, Buffett said Murphy had made him a "better person that I would otherwise be. That's the ultimate gift you can give to someone."
Because Murphy was an independent director, Berkshire's board now has an equal number of independent and non-independent directors.
Since that is a violation of an NYSE rule requiring a majority of independent directors, Berkshire says tonight that it is the "intention" of the board "to appoint a new independent director as soon as practicable."
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BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH
  BERKSHIRE'S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS - Feb. 18, 2022
 Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly-traded U.S. stocks by market value, based on today's closing prices.
Holdings are as of December 31, 2021 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on February 14, 2022, except for Apple, Bank of America, and U.S. Bancorp, which also include shares held as of December 31, 2021 as disclosed in New England Asset Management's 13F filing on February 14, 2022.
In addition to U.S. stocks, shares held as of December 31, 2020 of China's BYD, as listed in Buffett's 2020 letter to shareholders, are included. The price of those shares in U.S. trading is used to approximate the current market value of the position. The value of the stake as a percentage of the company's market value is fixed at what was listed as of December 31, 2020 in the letter.
The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch
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