List of Stocks Owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway

Morningstar published a listing of all the publicly-traded stocks owned by Warren Buffett's (pictured left) Berkshire Hathaway Corp. (BRKA). "We've also listed each company's economic moat," says Morningstar, " -- our assessment of the firm's competitive advantages -- as well as the current Morningstar Rating for stocks, which is based on the difference between the stock's current price and our fair value estimate".

That's good to know. After all, you wouldn't want to buy a stock just because Warren Buffett owned it without knowing also what meaningless mutual fund ratings firm Morningstar thought, right?

Here's the list, in order of largest to smallest holding, with those valuable Morningstar moat-and-star ratings:

1. Coca-Cola (KO): Wide Moat, 5 Stars
2. American Express (AXP): Wide Moat, 3 Stars
3. Wells Fargo (WFC): Wide Moat, 4 Stars
4. Procter & Gamble PG: Wide Moat, 3 Stars
5. Moody's (MCO): Wide Moat, 4 Stars
6. Wesco Financial (WSC): Narrow Moat, 4 Stars
7. Anheuser-Busch (BUD): Wide Moat, 5 Stars
8. Washington Post (WPO): Wide Moat, 5 Stars
9. ConocoPhillips (COP): Narrow Moat, 3 Stars
10. Ameriprise Financial (AMP): Not rated
11. Wal-Mart (WMT): Wide Moat, 5 Stars
12. M&T Bank (MTB): Narrow Moat, 3 Stars
13. USG Corporation (USG): Not rated
14. American Standard (ASD): Narrow Moat, 2 Stars
15. First Data (FDC): Wide Moat, 3 Stars
16. H&R Block (HRB): Wide Moat, 4 Stars
17. Comcast (CMCSA): Wide Moat, 3 Stars
18. Costco (COST): Narrow Moat, 3 Stars
19. General Electric (GE): Wide Moat, 3 Stars
20. Tyco International (TYC): Narrow Moat, 5 Stars
21. SunTrust Banks (STI): Narrow Moat, 3 Stars
22. Nike (NKE): Narrow Moat, 5 Stars
23. Gannett (GCI): Narrow Moat, 5 Stars
24. Gap (GPS): Narrow Moat, 4 Stars
25. Home Depot (HD): Wide Moat, 4 Stars
26. Torchmark (TMK): Narrow Moat, 3 Stars
27. Iron Mountain (IRM): Wide Moat, 3 Stars
28. Lexmark International (LXK): Narrow Moat, 3 Stars
29. United Parcel Service (UPS): Wide Moat, 4 Stars
30. Outback Steakhouse (OSI): No Moat, 4 Stars
31. PetroChina (PTR): Narrow Moat, 2 Stars
32. ServiceMaster (SVM): Narrow Moat, 3 Stars
33. Sealed Air (SEE): Narrow Moat, 5 Stars
34. Pier 1 Imports (PIR): No Moat, 4 Stars
35. Lowe's Companies (LOW): Wide Moat, 3 Stars
36. Comdisco Holdings (CDCO): Not rated
37. Tesco PLC: Not rated
38. Kingfisher (KGFHY): Not rated

Maybe I was a bit hard on Morningstar. The challenge with interpreting value investors' portfolios is that they hold stocks for long periods of time. So the fact that a holding is large, far from indicating great enthusiasm for a stock, could in fact be evidence that the stock was purchased at a much lower price a long time ago and will soon be sold.

So I guess you need someone to tell you what they think of Buffett's holdings. But Morningstar???

One useful comment the article did make, however, was this:

...we estimate that Berkshire has added almost $6 billion of "nondollar" assets to its holdings over the last few months. We aren't overly surprised by this, given Buffett's continued belief that large U.S. trade deficits will eventually cause the dollar to weaken.