Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has significantly strengthened its position in Deere & Co. in the second half of last year. Until now that was still a secret. Berkshire is obligated to publish its positions to the SEC every quarter. This is the overview of  Q4 2014: click here.

The stake in Deere amounts to 17 million stocks, good for more than 1.5 billion dollars. It also appears to be a new position, since Deer did not show up in the list in Berkshire’s Q3 filings. Mid November the market assumed that Berkshire Hathaway had sold the 4 million Deere shares that were visible in the Q2 filings.

That is apparently incorrect. Another filing shows that Berkshire Hathaway owned almost 7.6 million Deere shares at the end of the third quarter, which was already a 90 percent increase compared to the quarter before. In the fourth quarter, consequently, Warren Buffet’s investment company increased the position by another 126 percent.

Filings Berkshire

So why did Deere not show up in the Q3 filings of Berkshire Hathaway? At that time the company had stated that unspecified and confidential information was left out of the report and filed separately to the SEC, it appears now.

Why did the SEC allow this? In some cases the SEC will allow for a company like Berkshire Hathaway to build a position and protect the company from buyers that blindly follow Buffett and drive up the price.