Warren Buffett criticises Wall Street as Apple investment pays off

Warren Buffett said on Saturday he plans to stick with the shrewd bet that his Berkshire Hathaway Inc made on Bank of America Corp, but might eventually swap the preferred stock that Berkshire owns into common stock.

In his annual letter to Berkshire shareholders, Buffett said investors “will nearly certainly do well” by staying with the long term with a “collection of large, conservatively financed American businesses”. Its dozens of subsidiaries include auto insurer Geico, railroad BNSF, a network of auto dealerships, retailers and electric utilities.

The letter, which gets sent to the shareholders of Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, is studied by investors around the world for hints on how to replicate the so-called Sage of Omaha’s wonderful returns. “Ever-present naysayers may prosper by marketing their gloomy forecasts”.

Net earnings attributable to Berkshire shareholders improved to $6.286 billion from the year-ago quarter’s $5.48 billion.

Analysts expected operating profit to go no lower than $2,716.60 per share. Aggregate underwriting profits increased this past year to $2.1 billion from $1.8 billion.

Berkshire’s net earnings rose almost 15% in the fourth quarter, boosted in part by the stock market’s end-of-year gains, but the conglomerate’s results were roughly flat for the full year.

Buffett has always been bullish on prospects for businesses in the United States and few have benefited more than he from the nation’s economic prosperity, Bloomberg said.

That’s more than twice as much as Berkshire held as of December 31, the billionaire told the cable network in an interview Monday. But given the size of the Apple investment, and the collective stake Berkshire has taken in the airlines, it is likely that Buffett was behind both of those investments. The current CEO claims Jain generated billions of value since he started his career at the company in 1986. At the end of January its assets reached a record $4 trillion, following a year when Vanguard’s funds pulled in more new money than all rivals combined.

Share repurchases have become increasingly popular over the last five years, bringing into debate the merits of them.

By May of past year however, the conglomerate held more than $1B worth of AAPL stock – a disclosure that helped the stock climb 9%. One word sums up our country’s achievements: “miraculous“, he said.

The most recent 13-F filing from Berkshire showed that the company continued to buy airline stocks even after calling the sector a “death trap for investors” during his 2013 annual shareholder meeting.

Berkshire Hathaway had a good, but not great year, with book value per share rising by 11% versus a 12% total return for the S&P 500.