Billionaires Warren Buffett and Ken Fisher Like IBM, American Express, and More

Warren Buffett and Ken Fisher aren’t hedge fund managers, but their investing success (Buffett at holding company Berkshire Hathaway and Fisher at mutual fund Fisher Asset Management) has made them billionaires and has allowed them to build up a following in the investment community. Both Berkshire and Fisher file quarterly 13Fs, disclosing many of their long equity positions. Check out stock picks from Warren Buffett and from Ken Fisher. We have gone through both of these investors’ filings and here is our quick take on three stocks that both Buffett and Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management both had in their ten largest stock positions by market value:

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) was actually one of both managers’ top five stock picks. Berkshire’s stake increased slightly, coming in at almost 68 million shares, while Fisher’s holdings grew 48% to a total of 3.3 million shares. IBM gets more of its business from software and services than peers such as Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL), and as a result has been more immune to weakening hardware demand: while Dell’s earnings fell by nearly half last quarter compared to the same period in 2011, IBM’s net income was essentially unchanged. As a result, Dell’s share price has fallen 40% in the last year while IBM is flat (both companies have underperformed a rising market). Dell gets talked about as a possible value stock at 7 times trailing earnings, but IBM’s P/E of 14 isn’t that high either and the company seems like a considerably safer investment. IBM is far from a screaming buy- there’s still a chance that the hardware business could drag the company down- but we still think that it’s worth considering as a value stock.