r/walnutmarkets

Rare earth stocks ripped higher Friday, with MP Materials up ~8%, USA Rare Earth up ~9%, and NioCorp up ~3%.

The policy backdrop is getting hard to ignore. Trump recently told a defense audience to “do magnets”, while the administration continues pushing to build a domestic rare earth and permanent magnet supply chain. The U.S. is still heavily dependent on China for processing, so every new tariff, defense contract, subsidy or supply chain restriction matters a lot for this group.

This trade is starting to feel less like a commodity bet and more like an industrial-policy bet. Humanoid robots can require dozens of motors/actuators per unit, and S&P Global notes some designs may use 30+ motors, each potentially relying on rare earth magnets.

MP, USAR, or NB.. which one do you think actually becomes the biggest winner if the U.S. keeps throwing money at domestic magnet production?

https://app.walnutmarkets.com/ticker/MP

https://app.walnutmarkets.com/ticker/USAR

https://app.walnutmarkets.com/ticker/NB

Walnut picked up several Berkshire purchases reported Aug. 13: Charles C. Chang bought 1 BRK.A share for $764k, while Michael J. O’Sullivan disclosed multiple BRK.B buys totaling roughly $250k.

That puts the visible cluster at just over $1M of insider buying. Individually, none of these trades changes the Berkshire story. But multiple insiders buying around the same time is a lot more interesting than a one-off purchase.

Full Berkshire activity here:

https://app.walnutmarkets.com/ticker/BRK-B

Would you read anything into the cluster, or is ~$1M still too small to matter for a company Berkshire’s size?

Berkshire just reported Q2 operating profit of $12.98B, up 16% YOY, while net income more than doubled to $25.7B. They also bought back about $4.5B of stock, were a net buyer of equities for the first time since 2022, including $10B for GOOGL, and cash and cash equivalents dropped from roughly $397B to $366B.

Buffett spent the last few years basically saying there wasn't much worth buying, and investors assumed his stockpiling of cash meant he believed he was waiting for a downtown that would offer better opportunities. Now Abel is stepping in and Berkshire is spending capital, even with the S&P 500 near record highs. Could be timing. Could be a different approach. Too early to say.

Berkshire is only up around 3-4% YTD versus roughly 13% for the S&P 500, so the market clearly isn't giving Abel the same confidence Buffett had.

Is Berkshire getting more aggressive because they finally see value again, or are we actually watching the investment philosophy change since Buffett? And at today's valuation, would you rather own BRK.B or just buy the S&P 500?