Warren Buffett's $174 Billion Warning to Wall Street Grows Louder

 It's been an eventful week for Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett. On Saturday, May 3, the company held its annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, NE, which typically draws in the neighborhood of 40,000 attendees. It's quite the leap from Berkshire's early days, where its annual meeting was held in the employee cafeteria of subsidiary National Indemnity, and roughly two dozen shareholders would attend.

While the headline of Berkshire's annual meeting was the announcement that the Oracle of Omaha plans to step down as CEO by the end of the year, it wasn't the only eyebrow-raising moment.

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May 3 also marked the release of Berkshire Hathaway first-quarter operating results. Though it was, more or less, business as usual for the company's more than five-dozen owned subsidiaries (aside from higher insurance payouts), it's Berkshire's cash flow statement that was of particular interest.

Over six decades, Buffett has made a name of himself by putting his company's capital to work and making sound investment decisions. But based on Berkshire Hathaway's latest cash flow statement, Buffett and his team of top investment advisors, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, were net sellers of stocks for a 10th consecutive quarter.

Warren Buffett's $174 billion warning to Wall Street grows even louder

A week from today, on May 14, Berkshire Hathaway will file Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission following the closing bell. This filing provides investors with a concise snapshot of Berkshire's trading activity during the March-ended quarter.

But Berkshire's investors don't have to wait for a 13F filing to get a broad-stroke idea of what the Oracle of Omaha has been up to. During the March-ended quarter, Berkshire's cash flow statement listed $3.183 billion in "purchases of equity securities," as well as $4.677 billion in "sales of equity securities." In other words, Buffett and his crew sold $1.494 billion more in equity securities than they purchased.