How to Buy Berkshire at a Discount

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Have you ever wanted to buy a round lot of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) but your brokerage account fell slightly short of the required $11.75 million? Even 100 Berkshire Class B (BRK.B) shares could cost you more than $391,000.

TheStreet.com Ratings stock model scores the Berkshire Class A shares with a rating of B and the Class B shares with a rating of A-. Any rating of B- or better is equivalent to a buy rating.

But you do not have to tie up that much of your portfolio in a single stock. You don't even have to pay full price to get the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, working for you.

The best-rated closed-end fund with at least 50% portfolio allocation to equity securities is the Boulder Total Return Fund (BTF), which we rate A-. This fund currently trades at a discount of 11.7% to its net asset value, with its largest and third-largest holdings being Berkshire Class A and Class B shares, which together total 39% of assets.

Our stock model is also bullish on three of Boulder's other top holdings, Yum! Brands (YUM), Wal-Mart (WMT) and Anheuser-Busch (BUD).

The next four closed-end funds earned ratings of B+. All five of them have performed poorly in absolute terms. However, compared with other funds we rate on a risk-adjusted return basis, they have performed slightly better than their peers.

Cohen & Steers Dividend Majors Fund (DVM) is the second-best-ranked of this group, targeting real estate companies and stocks with above-average dividend yields. The average dividend yield in its portfolio amounts to 4.89%.

The Cohen fund's portfolio -- led by Macerich (MAC), Simon Property Group (SPG) and AvalonBay Communities (AVB) -- trades at a 12.8% discount to net asset value.

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