Who Owns Wells Fargo?
When it comes to investing, going with the crowd will rarely -- if ever -- make you rich. If your objective is to buy low and sell high, then, in the words of Warren Buffett, you must be "greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy." This is the foundation of contrarian investing.
But there's a twist. To be a contrarian investor, you must first know what to be contrary to. And this is where the SEC's invaluable EDGAR database comes in. Every quarter, companies and large institutional investors are required to disclose their equity holdings. By patching these together, we can get a fuller picture of a particular stock's popularity.
What follows, in turn, is a look at the principal owners of Wells Fargo's outstanding common stock.
A broad overview
As you can see in the following chart, the majority of Wells Fargo's 5.3 billion shares are held by institutional investors. Company insiders, including board members and corporate executives, own a further 0.07% of the outstanding common stock. And the public at large owns the remaining 21%.
Source: S&P's Capital IQ.
Institutional investors
Digging in a big further, the largest institutional stakeholder in Wells Fargo is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which owns 8.35% of the bank. Finishing off the five biggest institutional investors are asset managers: Bond giant BlackRock has an 5.3% stake, followed by The Vanguard Group, the asset management arm of State Street, and Fidelity Investments.
Source: S&P's Capital IQ.
The largest buyers have been Berkshire Hathaway and Waddell & Reed Investment Management, which have recently acquired 17.3 million and 9.9 million shares of common stock, respectively. Meanwhile, the two largest sellers of late have been Fidelity Investments and Wellington Management Co., which have disposed of 10.5 million and 9.6 million shares, respectively.
Biggest insiders
Turning to inside investors, the largest inside owner is David Hoyt, Wells Fargo's senior executive vice president in charge of wholesale banking. The second largest holder is Mark Oman, a former vice president of home and consumer finance. And the third largest holder is John Stumpf, the bank's current chairman and chief executive officer.
Source: S&P's Capital IQ.
The Foolish bottom line
While insider and institutional ownership together represent only one metric, it's nevertheless an important one. Beyond hinting at the overall market's sentiment toward a stock, it also gives investors insight into the confidence of the people best positioned to predict a company's current state and future success.
Want to learn more about Wells Fargo?
Wells Fargo's dedication to solid, conservative banking helped it vastly outperform its peers during the financial meltdown. Today, Wells is the same great bank as ever, but with its stock trading at a premium to the rest of the industry, is there still room to buy, or is it time to cash in your gains? To help figure out whether Wells Fargo is a buy today, I invite you to download our premium research report from one of The Motley Fool's top banking analysts. Click here now for instant access to this in-depth take on Wells Fargo.
The article Who Owns Wells Fargo? originally appeared on Fool.com.
John Maxfield has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Berkshire Hathaway, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway and Wells Fargo. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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