Inside Bill Gates’ 2021 Stock Portfolio

[Music] So Bill Gates, we all know him, we all love him. He is currently the fourth richest person in the whole world, and we know him because these days he uses his wealth to fund the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which does fantastic charity work all around the world.

And there's no secret that a big component of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is that idea of preserving Bill's wealth, and the way they do it is through a big stock portfolio. Currently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's stock portfolio is worth 22.3 billion dollars.

So in this video, we are going to talk through that portfolio and the biggest positions in that portfolio to give us a sense of what Bill Gates is holding in his portfolio for 2021. Because literally, right about now, we are getting the 13F filings released from all of the big investors around from the United States. Of course, the 13F filings tell us what is in their share portfolio.

So the data that we're getting now is actually the data for the end of Q4 2020. Now, over the next week or so, I'm sure I'm going to be covering a lot of different investors; we get to see what these investors are holding or were holding first of January heading into 2021.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation portfolio is currently holding 21 stocks. Eleven of those stocks hold more than one percent of the portfolio. So let's have a look at them.

At number 11, we have Coca-Cola FEMSA, which is a Mexican multi-national beverage company. It is a subsidiary of FEMSA, which owns 48% of the company's stock. Then, 28% is held by wholly owned subsidiaries of the Coca-Cola Company, and then the rest is traded on the Mexican and New York stock exchanges.

Interestingly, what Coca-Cola FEMSA actually does is it bottles Coca-Cola. That's their business—they bottle and distribute Coca-Cola to all parts of America. So that's number 11 in the portfolio.

Number 10 is Schrodinger Inc., which is a software company that actually helps with computer modeling of different molecules. So it helps, say, materials engineers, and it helps pharmaceutical companies to actually twiddle and mess around with, I guess, the chemistry behind different molecules actually within computer software.

I think this one's probably in there because it hits pretty close to home with some of the stuff that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation actually does.

Moving on, ninth is UPS, and eighth is FedEx—big name package delivery companies over in the United States. Then seventh is Crown Castle. Crown Castle turns out to be America's largest provider of communications infrastructure. They’ve got 40,000 cell towers, 70,000 small cell nodes, and over 80,000 miles of fiber.

So that's number seven. Coming in at number six is Ecolab, which is a water treatment, purification, cleaning, and hygiene services provider. Again, this aligns with some of the stuff that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation actually does.

Then we've got fifth, which is Walmart—obviously a massive chain of what they call hypermarkets over in the United States. I've actually not heard the term "hypermarket" used before, but it makes sense considering Walmart stores sell basically anything under the sun that you could possibly want. You'd probably find it in Walmart.

Then, coming before Walmart, number four on the list is the Canadian National Railway, which is a freight railway company that has railway right across Canada and down through the United States.

Then third is Caterpillar, which is obviously the world's largest machinery and construction equipment manufacturer. Then second, we've got Waste Management—which, no prize is for guessing—deals in the management of waste.

And then, of course, first on the list—again, no prizes for guessing this one—when it comes to Bill Gates' portfolio, number one on the list is, of course, Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's multinational conglomerate, which consists predominantly of insurance companies, energy companies, and railway companies. And of course, we can't forget about that monster stock portfolio that Berkshire Hathaway has as well.

So those are all of the positions in Bill Gates' portfolio that take up over one percent, at least one percent of that portfolio. It's a really interesting portfolio because when you look through the companies that are in this portfolio, immediately the thing that stands out is that this is a defensive portfolio.

You know, companies like Waste Management occupy, say, 10 odd percent of the portfolio, whereas companies like Apple or Amazon hold 0.6 and 0.4 percent respectively. Understandably, this portfolio is definitely designed to preserve wealth, and you can see that because a lot of the big positions in this portfolio are companies that are just kind of going to grow alongside just general economic growth.

I mean, this portfolio is definitely a bet that people are going to continue doing what they already do. You know, it's betting that humans are going to continue to generate waste; it's betting that they'll continue showing up to Walmart stores; they're going to keep getting packages delivered to their houses; we're going to continue building new buildings and continue mining for, you know, different resources that we need.

It's a bet, not necessarily on any one sector or industry; it's just a bet that the things that kind of happen already in the economy are going to continue to occur and just grow slowly but surely over time.

There's definitely no room for speculation in this sort of portfolio, but what I'm finding really interesting is looking at the recent activity in the portfolio because when you actually have a look at what moves were made in this portfolio in Q4 2020, as we prepared to head into 2021, there was actually a lot of selling.

They only added to one position, and that was to Schrodinger, but they either reduced or sold out of 11 other positions. Now, I've seen people saying, you know, that, "Oh, Bill Gates is selling out; he thinks that the economy is going to do terribly over the next couple of years. Why would he be selling all of these positions if he was still bullish?"

It definitely looks like that at face value, but in reality, it's actually really not a big deal whatsoever.

Because if you have a look at the column where it actually shows you the percentage impact on the portfolio itself, you can see that most of these moves—despite they might have sold out completely or reduced by 50 percent in a particular position—all of that has really had a minuscule effect on the actual portfolio itself.

Even if you look at the portfolio and say Bill Gates sold completely out of Uber, completely out of Alibaba, he reduced 50% in Apple; he reduced 50% on Amazon and Google—that all of that selling still only equates to a 2.12% change in his portfolio.

And if you start thinking about it like that, well then, when you look at the numbers, the big story suddenly becomes Bill Gates sells 10% of his position in Berkshire Hathaway, which altered his portfolio. It reduced his portfolio size by 5%.

That reduction in Berkshire Hathaway was more impactful to his portfolio than all of the other sales combined. The selling of Berkshire Hathaway was worth 5%; all the other sales combined were only 2.6%.

However, I can tell you guys that this, as well, is a little bit of a non-story because I can absolutely 100% guarantee that Bill is not selling the Berkshire Hathaway stock because he thinks any less of the business or less of Warren Buffett or he thinks the economy is going down the drain. Absolutely not.

In fact, if you have a look at the history of him buying or selling Berkshire Hathaway stock, every single quarter he sells five million Berkshire shares every single quarter without fail, except Q3 of every year.

And I actually think that in Q3 of every year, he does sell five million shares of Berkshire. However, I also know that it's in Q3 where Warren Buffett, who is a big donor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, makes his donations.

The other thing we know is that Warren Buffett always donates Berkshire Hathaway shares. So I actually think that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sells five million Berkshire Hathaway shares every single quarter, and they do that as well in Q3.

It's just that in Q3, overall, net they add to their Berkshire Hathaway position by being gifted a whole lot of shares annually from Warren Buffett.

So overall, even though you might hear stories like Bill Gates is selling his, you know, Apple or Amazon position, he's selling out of Alibaba or Uber, he thinks the economy is going down the drain. If you see headlines like that, it's actually really not the case.

In fact, the story is probably quite the opposite. I mean, as we said before, all of the sales, if you exclude the Berkshire Hathaway sale, changed his portfolio, reduced his portfolio by 2.6%.

And right now, the portfolio is actually worth the most it's been worth in a few years since Q3 2018. So he's got more on the line now than he has done even in recent years.

And with all of the companies he's got big positions in being so focused on just economic factors, I really don’t think Bill Gates is, you know, predicting doomsday in the economy or thinks the economy is going to go down the drain.

Because his portfolio, although his activity might give you at face value that impression, when you actually look at the portfolio, and how much is in there and what companies it's invested in, you soon realize that's really not the case.

So anyway, guys, that is Bill Gates' portfolio as we head—well, we're now well and truly into 2021. It's just annoying that the information about what these big names are buying and selling is always so delayed.

They only have to submit their 13F filings within 45 days after the quarter's finished, and right now it’s like 45 days after Q4 2020 finished. That's why we're getting all these big names suddenly coming out with their 13F filings.

So although it's a little bit delayed, I do still find it very interesting to see what big investors, big names hold in their stock portfolios, and I thought that, yeah, Bill Gates has a very interesting portfolio—very defensive.

But I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this portfolio and maybe the moves that he's made. Would you have sold out of, you know, Alibaba and Uber and reducing Apple and Amazon and Google and so on?

Let me know that stuff down in the comments section below; I'd be really interested to hear what you think. But that is it from me for today. If you enjoyed the video, leave a like on it I very much appreciate it.

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But apart from that, guys, that will do me for today. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you guys in the next video. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign