Some of Buffett's favorite long-term holdings have been crashing down to levels last seen in 2023: Japanese trading houses Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Marubeni, Itochu und Sumitomo.
As I write some of them are down 15% at the TSO, after losing similar amounts during the last two trading sessions.

Buffett initiated his positions in 2019/20 when the trading houses were trading far below their BVs. After trading at a rare premium to BV in recent times, they are now back to around BV (on average).

That said, they had been evident momentum plays for some time and are still up 3-4x compared to 2020 - at least in JPY. Since the JPY has weakened significantly over the past few years, in other currencies the gain is less.

Talking about currency, these trading houses have significant exposure to non-Japanese assets and their BV will shrink a lot alongside their earnings if the JPY strengthens, although, for non-Japanese investors at least, those reduced BV and earnings would be worth more at that point.

The current panic is likely only partially motivated by those issues. I suspect many Buffett-piggybackers are getting cold feet. In addition, having become the poster child of the recent stock market boom in Japan, as the market is about to hit a difficult stretch, clearly has a flip side.

Buffett is already very close to the 10% ownership cap he agreed to, and given ongoing share repurchases by the trading houses and no recent JPY bond issuance by BRK, I don't expect him to add significantly to his stakes.

For other investors, however, this might be a nice opportunity: These companies are broadly diversified, are regularly generating very decent ROE around 15%, pay nice dividends and are increasingly buying back shares (also pushed by new regulations seeking to improve the capital structures of Japanese public companies).