3 No-Brainer Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy Right Now

He may only be weeks away from stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway's chief executive and chief stock picker.

For the time being though, Berkshire's holdings are still ultimately Warren Buffett's picks, and as such are worth considering for your portfolio as well.

Three of them stand out among the rest right now, with one recent surprise addition making its way into the mix.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

1. Lamar Advertising

If the name Lamar Advertising (NASDAQ: LAMR) rings a bell but you can't quite figure out why, this might jostle your memory: You're probably seeing the name every time you travel more than a mile away from your home. See, it's printed below most of its 360,000+ billboards and other advertising displays peppered across the U.S. and Canada.

It's not exactly a growth business; single-digit year-over-year comparisons are the norm here. What this company lacks in growth firepower, however, it more than makes up for in persistent long-term progress with its top and bottom lines. Which makes sense -- the need to advertise goods and services never really goes away for very long. Lamar's dominance of this cost-effective sliver of the advertising market also provides it with a major advantage over its rivals.

That's still not quite the reason Buffett's interested enough to commit roughly $150 million worth of capital to an investment in the $13 billion company, though. Arguably more than anything, Berkshire's management likely sees Lamar as a cash cow, currently yielding nearly 4.8%. That's based on a dividend, by the way, that's now been raised for five consecutive years.

This still doesn't make it dividend royalty. But it's certainly not a stretch to suggest this company (which is organized as a REIT) could eventually achieve royalty status.

2. Occidental Petroleum

Buffett's been a fan of oil and gas name Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) for a long time now, regularly adding to Berkshire's position since first stepping into it back in 2019. Indeed, it's now the conglomerate's seventh-biggest trade -- a holding worth a little more than $11 billion. That's nearly 4% of Berkshire's stock portfolio, and more than one-fourth of Occidental itself.

But surely Buffett recognizes that fossil fuels are surviving on borrowed time, and will eventually cede to cleaner alternatives like solar and wind. What gives?

Renewables may be the future, but it's not like oil and gas are near their end. A recent outlook from Goldman Sachs suggests that the planet's daily consumption of crude oil is set to continue growing all the way through 2040, while the International Energy Agency doesn't expect the world to reach "peak oil" until 2050. And even once it does, it will still continue to use quite a bit of it for at least another decade as it weans itself from this well-proven source of energy.

How can this be the case given all the buzz surrounding renewables? The simple fact is demand for electricity is growing faster than the planet can add the capacity from renewables to deliver it. Crude oil, natural gas, and even coal are readily available right now. So is the infrastructure to use them. As such, there's still plenty of money to be made by supplying, even if gas and oil prices end up stagnating at their current tempered levels. And as Buffett himself commented of Occidental Petroleum's CEO Vicki Hollub back in his 2023 letter to Berkshire shareholders (published in early 2024):

Under Vicki Hollub's leadership, Occidental is doing the right things for both its country and its owners. No one knows what oil prices will do over the next month, year, or decade. But Vicki does know how to separate oil from rock, and that's an uncommon talent, valuable to her shareholders and to her country.

That's not changed in the meantime.

3. Alphabet

Finally, if the long-standing (and enormous) position in Apple hasn't convinced you that Buffett has finally gotten on board the technology train, this might: Berkshire recently opened a position in Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL).

It's not a big trade -- the 17.8 million shares Berkshire now owns are only worth a little over $4 billion, or just a little over 1% of the conglomerate's total stock holdings. It's also only a fraction of Alphabet's $3.3 trillion market cap.

Still, it's telling to see this pick at all. It also may only be a start. Buffett and his lieutenants often build on an initial position over time, after all, as has been the case with Domino's Pizza.

GOOG Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

It's not too difficult to understand the bullish interest either.

While he's historically eschewed tech stocks, Alphabet's business model doesn't bring the sort of complexity to the table that Buffett is hoping to avoid; the company simply connects consumers to most everything the worldwide web has to offer. And it's dominant on this front in several ways.

For instance, Google still handles 90% of the world's web searches, according to numbers from Statcounter, while its Android operating system is installed on three-fourths of the world's mobile devices. This defendable dominance is how the company's managed to grow its revenue every quarter going all the way back to 2013, with the exception of the second quarter of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading like wildfire. Alphabet's profit growth has been even more impressive for this time frame, even if not as consistent, and there's no reason to think this streak's going to come to a close anytime soon.

James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Domino's Pizza, and Goldman Sachs Group. The Motley Fool recommends Occidental Petroleum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.