Steep slide - anyone buying?


Yes, I bought a little more last week, at about the current price.

I don't know if going from about $56 to a peak of $69 in April, back down to about $51 now is quite 'steep', but it's enough of a difference for me to up my stake a bit.

Buffett was buying every time it dipped down under $60, and had 255,281,524 by June 30, not counting the preferred shares that allow him to buy another big slug. The last purchase I can see was June 27, when he bought 2.9m shares at $59.70, so if that's right, either Buffett has enough now or he feels something has changed, or maybe he thinks that the fair price has come down a bit as oil prices have slumped in the last few months from about $82 to $70.

I still think there's an outside chance that Buffett decides to buy the whole thing, even though that probability dropped a lot when he said he had no interest in running the firm. As a pure bet on oil, I think you could do better (e.g. Suncor at 8.5x earnings, or Canadian Natural Resources at 9.9x), but Occidental is now at 13x, can probably do better with low oil prices than SU and CNX, and has the small advantage of having the possibility of getting a Berkshire takeover premium.