Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway slashes Apple stake by nearly half

Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has slashed its stake in Apple by nearly 50%, according to financial documents filed Saturday after technology stocks across the board took a beating.

The value of Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in Apple dropped from $174 billion in December 2023 to $84 billion in June, according to Berkshire's second-quarter earnings report. The number of shares held by the Omaha, Neb.-based conglomerate dropped from 790 million to 400 million.

The aggressive move surprised market observers as contrary to Buffett's well-known philosophy of holding investments for the long term and added to the gloom surrounding tech stocks generally following their broad-based rout on Friday.

Although Buffett's massive sell-off of Apple shares came while stock indexes were peaking in recent months, news of his move came after the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had reeled into correction territory, shedding 10% from its record-high set just weeks ago.

"You could conclude this is another sell signal," Edward Jones analyst Jim Shanahan told Bloomberg. "This was a far higher level of selling activity than we were expecting."

Apple stock closed at $219.86 on Friday after posting earnings that beat Wall Street's expectations, but other individual tech stocks were pounded Friday as investors reacted to a weaker-than-expected jobs report and the unemployment rate jumping to 4.3% -- its highest rate since 2021.

The data sparked widespread fears the Federal Reserve has waited too long to lower interest rates while fighting once-rampant inflation and may have triggered a recession.

During Friday's rout, chip maker Intel lost more than 27%, Snap fell 26%, Lumen Technologies lost 6% and Tesla fell about 3%.