Gold, not Goldman
Buffett picks up miner, drops Sachs
Warren Buffett has given up his long-held conviction against buying gold — and meanwhile he’s getting out of Goldman Sachs.
The totemic tycoon revealed in filings late last week that he has scooped up more than 20 million shares of mining giant Barrick Gold Corp. even as he unloaded nearly all of his nearly 2 million shares in Goldman Sachs.
The 89-year-old investing icon’s sudden embrace of the precious metal — which he has previously derided as “useless,” saying that “anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head” at the idea of investing in it
— took many on Wall Street by surprise.
But it’s what the Oracle of Omaha did with his other bank stocks that has top analysts talking. In addition to dumping Goldman, Buffett cut his position in JPMorgan Chase by more than 61 percent and sold off more than a quarter of his remaining stake in Wells Fargo.
At the same time, Buffett didn’t touch his 245 million shares in Bank of America, which he has lately beefed up in stock purchases that have left him holding roughly 12 percent of the company.
“Bank of America is a franchise that can be held for the next 100 years,” Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo told The Post. “Goldman is in the middle of a revamping from Wall Street to Main Street, and the jury on that will remain out for a while.”
Mayo was referring to Goldman CEO and parttime DJ David Solomon’s plan to reorganize the megabank to focus less on trading, and more on investment banking and its nascent commercial lending business. That revamp, however, has been hampered by the 1MDB bribery scandal in Malaysia. Goldman’s stock is down over 12 percent this year.