Guru Ian Cumming (Trades, Portfolio), founder of Leucadia National (LUK, Financial), a New York-based holding company, tends to be low-key in his personal stock dealings. He hasn’t had more than two large transactions in a quarter in three years, and the third quarter of 2014 was no exception.
Well, it was an exception in one regard – whether he deals in one stock or several, Cumming frequently buys or sells in numbers that can be expressed in millions or tens of millions. Sometimes, though, as was the case in the third quarter, his deals involve much smaller chunks – still large by the standards of most ordinary investors but small compared to the size of transactions he frequently makes.
Cumming only made one transaction in the third quarter, reducing his stake in INTL FCStone Inc (INTL, Financial), a New York-based financial services company, by nearly 16%. Cumming sold 233,059 shares at an average price of $23.01. The sale had a -0.58% impact on his portfolio.
Leucadia, which Cumming founded with business school classmate Joseph Steinberg and served as chief executive until it merged with the Jefferies Group (JEF, Financial) in 2013, isn’t a mirror reflection of its founder. Because it has a wide range of holdings in the mining and drilling, telecommunications, healthcare, manufacturing, banking, real estate and winery fields, Leucadia has been called a “baby Berkshire Hathaway” (BRK.A) (BRK.B).
But no one would confuse Cumming’s portfolio with Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)’s. Buffett’s portfolio contains stocks in nearly four dozen companies; Cumming’s portfolio has two. In addition to his remaining holdings in INTL FCStone, Cumming has 41,600,000 shares of Harbinger Group Inc (HRG, Financial), a New York-based holding company that was started in the 1950s by a group that included future President George H.W. Bush.
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