5 Stocks Warren Buffett is Selling

3. Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) 

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 96    

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a financial services company headquartered in California. It is ranked third on our list of 10 stocks Warren Buffett is selling. The stock has returned 71% to investors over the past year. As part of a larger shedding of big finance, Buffett has trimmed stake in the firm by 99% in the past few months. At the end of March, Berkshire Hathaway owned 675,054 shares in the firm worth $26 million, representing a very small portion of the investment portfolio. 

On July 8, news platform CNBC reported that Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) would be discontinuing all personal credit lines within weeks. The move is part of a plan by the firm to focus on personal loans and credit cards. 

At the end of the first quarter of 2021, 96 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $7.4 billion in Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) , down from 99 in the previous quarter worth $8.7 billion.

In its Q4 2020 investor letter, Davis Funds, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Detractors to performance relative to the index include financial services holdings such as Wells Fargo. While banks in general have suffered due to the recession and experienced credit losses, Wells Fargo also suffered from operational missteps. It is our expectation, however, that our bank holdings in general will benefit from stronger economic growth as the pandemic recedes; and we believe Wells Fargo in particular, will, over time, lower their costs and successfully grow their businesses.”