Speculation Builds on Warren Buffett's New Secret Stock

investing.com:

In its latest quarterly 13F, released Tuesday evening, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) (BRK-A) highlighted that it has added at least one new stock in the third quarter and is not ready to tell the world about it just yet. Berkshire used what is known as confidential treatment with the SEC for the new stock position or positions. This will allow Berkshire to build the position without worrying about Buffett disciples bidding the stock up.

«The Manager has omitted from this public Form 13F one or more holding(s) for which it is requesting confidential treatment from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to section 13(f) of the Exchange Act and rule 24b-2 thereunder,» the filing reads in legalese.

This is the first time since late 2020 that Berkshire has used the confidential treatment rule. At that time, the fund was confidentially accumulating stock in Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and Verizon (NYSE:VZ).

Of course, this has led to all kinds of speculation about what the new Buffett stock or stocks are.

Analysts at Barron's believe Berkshire added a financial stock, noting that in its 10-Q the firm revealed that its financial stock cost basis increased by approximately $1.2 billion during the third quarter while its cost basis in other stock groups fell. The new 13F didn't show any additions to its current holdings of financial stocks, suggesting it is the new stock(s) that led to the increase.

The fund already owns a host of financial names, so that automatically rules them out as the new mystery position.

Berkshire currently owns financials Bank of America (BAC), American Express (NYSE:AXP), Visa (NYSE:V), Mastercard (NYSE:MA), Capital One (COF), Citigroup ©, Ally Financial (NYSE:ALLY), and Moody's