I try to share my opinions with readers like you in a variety of different ways, from my notes on each teaser stock I cover to my more thorough looks at “idea of the month” picks or stocks that I buy personally … but investing is a very quantifiable thing, so even though my investment priorities, predilections and peccadillos are almost certain to be quite different from yours, one way I can share my thoughts and convictions is by telling you not just which stocks I find appealing in the abstract but which stocks I’ve actually bought with my own money.

I do that every time I trade, of course — I update the Irregulars whenever there’s a buy or sell in my individual equity portfolio. But that doesn’t tell you which positions are largest or most important to me. So every now and then I update folks with the list of my top positions. This is just my equity holdings, so it doesn’t include warrants or options or mutual funds or other investments (if we included derivatives, Boston Private Financial and Sandstorm Gold would have been on this list). I am not a nimble or active trader, and most positions I buy with the intention of holding them for a very long time.

So that’s the backdrop, and these are my current top ten personal holdings, in order:

Apple (AAPL)
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B)
Africa Oil (AOIFF)
Markel (MKL)
Seadrill (SDRL)
Altius Minerals (ATUSF)
Google (GOOG)
Sprott Resource Corp (SCPZF)
Greenlight Re (GLRE)
Retail Opportunity Investments Corp (ROIC)

(If we included warrants, SAND would be up near Apple and Berkshire — but my SAND common stock holding now comes in at number 11, tied with Dorchester Minerals (DMLP))

Those ten names make up about 2/3 of my individual stock portfolio (the remaining 1/3 is spread among another 20 or so stocks), so it’s fairly concentrated at the top.

Which ones have done best? Well, other than the moonshot that was Africa Oil, which was lucky, they’ve been the stocks that I’ve held onto for the longest — I started buying Google and Berkshire Hathaway in 2005, and Markel and Seadrill in 2006, and they’re among the stocks I hold with the highest conviction because I understand them well and am comfortable with their ongoing business and strategy — ...