COF
Buffett hit the sell button, Loeb hit buy
Capital One is having a very “choose your fighter” moment. Berkshire Hathaway chopped its stake by about 58%, trimming 4.15 million shares and leaving it with just 3 million. Meanwhile, Dan Loeb’s Third Point went the other way, adding 685,000 shares and swelling its COF position to 825,000 shares worth about $165.5 million.
Why the split matters
This isn’t just rich-people chess for the sake of rich-people chess. Berkshire’s move suggests caution around consumer credit, while Loeb seems to be betting that Capital One’s new shape after the Discover acquisition can unlock more upside.
That deal gave Capital One control of the Discover Global Payment Network, which is a pretty big identity change for a company that used to look mostly like a card issuer. Now it has a shot at being more of a full-stack payments player — the kind of pivot Wall Street loves to argue about over too much coffee.
The Discover angle is doing the heavy lifting
Capital One’s latest quarterly results gave the bulls something to point at:
- Adjusted EPS came in at $5.81 vs. estimates of $4.77
- Revenue reached $15.85 billion
- Domestic card revenue jumped 30% year over year
- Even excluding Discover, domestic card revenue still rose 9.5%
So the market is left with a classic investing soap opera: one legend is reducing exposure, another is increasing it, and the underlying business is trying to prove that a big acquisition can actually make the story better — not just louder.
Big picture
For COF, this is less about who’s smarter and more about what kind of company Capital One is becoming. If Discover keeps adding fuel to earnings, Loeb may look clever. If credit starts to sour, Berkshire may look like it saw the exit sign first.