Buffett Goes on Biggest Stock Buying Spree in More Than 15 Years

Warren Buffett has turned into something of a crony capitalist. In recent years many of Buffett's big buys have been deals where he knows he has some kind of government back-up (e.g. his Goldman Sachs buy), but he has been doing a lot of plain old buying in recent weeks.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested $23.9 billion in the third-quarter, the most in at least 15 years, reports Bloomberg.

It makes no sense to pay attention to Buffett when he is babbling on about tax proposals and backing up his man Obama, but it makes sense to watch when he is buying stocks. He's only going to do it when he sees real bargains.

In the third quarter, Buffet, drew down Berkshire’s cash as Europe’s debt crisis and Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. pushed stocks to their worst quarterly performance since 2008. The investments disclosed Nov. 4 include $6.9 billion of equities, $5 billion in the crony deal for preferred shares and warrants in Bank of America Corp. and the acquisition of Lubrizol Corp. for about $9 billion.

The $6.9 billion in equity purchases is what is fascinating.

Berkshire only bought $3.62 billion in the second quarter and $834 million in the first.

Berkshire has disclosed new stakes this year in MasterCard Inc. (MA), and retailer Dollar General Corp. (DG) . He is also likely collecting stakes in other firms. Berkshire has requested permission to omit information from filings that list U.S. equity holdings as of March 31 and June 30, which likely means there are positions in other stocks that he is still accumulating that he doesn't want to disclose for fear the stocks will climb in price on the news that he is accumulating them.