Jan. 2 at 4:41 PM
Ted Weschler appears poised to become Berkshire Hathaway’s lead stock picker as Warren Buffett steps back and Todd Combs exits the firm. Weschler, 64, has an impressive personal investing record, having grown a roughly
$70,000 IRA into about
$221 million by 2018 before joining Berkshire in 2012.
At Berkshire, Weschler has managed an estimated 5% of the company’s roughly
$300 billion equity portfolio. With Combs leaving for JPMorgan Chase, Weschler is likely to take on a much larger role overseeing a portfolio heavily concentrated in a few major holdings such as Apple, American Express, Bank of America, and Coca-Cola, along with numerous smaller positions attributed to him and Combs.
Still, his track record at Berkshire raises questions. Buffett said in 2019 that both Weschler and Combs had slightly lagged the S&P 500 since joining the firm, and some investments linked to Weschler—notably DaVita and Sirius XM—have underperformed in recent years.
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