In a move that made wallets everywhere applaud, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRKa) pulled back the curtain on Wednesday to reveal its latest masterpiece: a whopping $6.72 billion stake in Chubb Ltd (NYSE:CB). As the news hit the wires, Chubb’s shares sky-rocketed like they had just won the jackpot in a game of financial roulette, soaring 7.5% after hours to a dazzling record high of $271.84.
Berkshire, playing the role of the financial puppet master, disclosed in a filing that it owned a staggering 25.9 million shares in the insurer as of March 31, a fact that sent shockwaves through the market like a well-timed plot twist in a blockbuster movie. But this wasn’t Berkshire’s first rodeo; they had been stealthily accumulating Chubb shares since the third quarter of 2023, sneaking under the radar with the blessing of the Securities and Exchange Commission, much like a cat burglar tiptoeing through a museum after hours.
And it wasn’t just Chubb that Berkshire had its eyes on; they had also been making moves on Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX), Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE:XOM), International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM), and Verizon Communications Inc (NYSE:VZ), proving once again that when it comes to the stock market, Berkshire plays chess while others are still figuring out checkers. As if that weren’t enough excitement for one day, Chubb decided to add some icing to the cake by clocking in some seriously impressive earnings for the first quarter of 2024, with gross premiums hitting a jaw-dropping $14 billion and net income soaring to $5.23 from $4.54 the previous year.
And just when you thought the plot couldn’t thicken any further, Berkshire dropped another bombshell by disclosing that it had sold about 15 million shares in Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the first quarter, a move that raised eyebrows but didn’t dampen Berkshire’s affection for the tech giant, which still remained its biggest holding by a country mile, valued at a staggering $135.4 billion. With Berkshire’s financial antics turning the stock market into a real-life soap opera, one thing’s for sure: Thursdays just got a whole lot more interesting.