Buffett’s appearance came courtesy of former BNSF Railway CEO Matt Rose, a longtime supporter of The Gatehouse. This is a very interesting interview — one that I had never seen before — that delves into different areas (like streaming, real estate, and more) than the typical Buffett Q&A session. Enjoy!

A couple of quick notes: I condensed and summarized some of Becky’s questions to keep the spotlight on Buffett’s answers. I also omitted a brief discussion of the Gates Foundation near the end, since that is no longer relevant to Buffett and Berkshire watchers.

Becky Quick: You called the BNSF Railway acquisition a huge bet on the future of the American economy — and that bet paid off in a big way. In fact, this year in the annual report you wrote about BNSF as one of the towering redwoods in the grove that is Berkshire Hathaway. Looking back on nine years, what can you say about what has happened since?

Warren Buffett: It is the tallest redwood in the Berkshire forest. It was a seminal time for Berkshire, in either the last days of October or the early days of November of 2009, [when] Matt [Rose] and I talked at a small hotel in Fort Worth. Our directors are going to meet there in the fall — it will be the tenth anniversary [of the BNSF deal]. I’ve had so much good luck in Texas, but nothing rivals the BNSF acquisition.

One thing you may find interesting [is] I had a talk with Matt, I guess it was the Monday following the Friday I was out here with him. We more or less had the deal and then I called our lawyers and I said, “You fellows can bill me for all the hours you want between now and Sunday at noon. And after that, you’re working for nothing.”

We compressed that deal into a one-week period or so that otherwise probably would have taken months if I hadn’t made that restriction. Those of you who have dealt on corporate deals will understand why I stuck that in. (Laughs)

Matt is retiring next month. What are you going to do without him?

He has left us a great, great railroad. It is the towering redwood at Berkshire and we’re going to take good care of what he has built for us. I think I described it as being a bet on the country and a 100-year asset. It’s more than a 100-year asset, but I thought that would probably be as long as I would be around. I didn’t want to speak beyond my tenure. (Laughs)

It is so fundamental. It moves more than 15% of the ton miles in terms of inter-city traffic in the United States. It’s important not only to Berkshire, [but] it really is important to the country. And it has been treated by Matt like it was important to the country. He realizes that it has a significance that goes well beyond that of virtually any businesses in making sure that this country works the way we want it to work.

Warren, you’ve been fascinated with the railroads since you were a kid.

Right.

Now, you look at it as something much more than just a fun toy. You watch this as something that’s a real way of measuring the economy. You talk all the time about the car-rail loads. What are you seeing right now when you look at that statistic and what does that tell you about the economy?

It’s distorted in the last week or two by the floods in the Midwest — and we move a lot of coal — but there are twenty-odd categories that the railroad industry reports on for all the railroads. Winter is always a little bit of a tricky thing, but I would say that it looks like it’s slowing down. I don’t mean it has reversed in course or anything, but it does seem [that way] from all of [our] businesses, but especially including railroad statistics because they come so fast and they cover such a broad spectrum.

It gets distorted by whether people are hurrying up the Pacific trade because they’re worried about tariffs and all of that sort of thing — but I would say it does look like the pace of increase in the economy has slowed down. I would call it somewhere close to noticeably, but I wouldn’t go beyond that.

Have you seen it broadly or are there a couple of areas where you see more weakness?

There are these twenty-odd categories, like autos and aggregates [and] grain. Almost all of those categories throughout last year were trending strong. And I would say, just looking at those figures — but also looking at a good many other figures I see on a weekly basis — it looks like things have slowed down. You always have the weather factor. That’s the way I would bet looking at what I see today.

That doesn’t change anything we do. If there was a flashing red light, if there was a blaring red light, we would keep investing the same way we do.

Just look at the railroad in terms of what the situation was in the fall of 2009. It looked like the end of the world and it turned out that that was the low quarter, the third quarter. You really want to bet on America. [We] listened to that magnificent rendition a few minutes ago. God has blessed America.

I don’t want to get too wonky on this, but the yield curve — when you look at the ten-year versus the three-month — has inverted. This is a pretty important recession signal. It has signaled every recession that we’ve seen in the last fifty years and it has only given an incorrect signal once. This is the first time it has inverted since 2007. Do you see a recession on the horizon?

I just hope I see a lot of recessions. I hope I live long enough! (Laughs)

I don’t know how many recessions I’ve lived through. I was born on August 30, 1930, and the Dow was a little over 250. By the time I got out of college, there was only one or two days after my birth that it had been that high. I don’t know whether I’ve lived through eight recessions or six recessions or you name it, but that’s part of the capitalistic system.

We will have them — and it won’t change anything Berkshire invests in. It may offer us more opportunities, in marketable securities or businesses.

If we see a good business and everybody in the world is bearish and that [yield curve] inversion has gone to a hundred basis points or something like that, we’re going to buy it. And we will buy it enthusiastically.

You’ve talked an awful lot in the past about how high yields act as gravity on stock prices — so if you’re seeing really low yields that, inversely, could mean that stocks should trade a lot higher. What do you think of that?

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This month’s transcript for paid supporters comes from a lesser-known Buffett Q&A where he opens up on some of his investments that rarely get much airtime. Plus, a smattering of topics of perennial interest to investors like interest rates, IPOs, etc.

Here is a sneak peek at Buffett’s response when asked — for probably the thousandth time in his life — whether he saw a recession looming on the horizon.

I just hope I see a lot of recessions. I hope I live long enough! (Laughs)

I don’t know how many recessions I’ve lived through. I was born on August 30, 1930, and the Dow was a little over 250. By the time I got out of college, there were only one or two days after my birth that it had been that high. I don’t know whether I’ve lived through eight recessions or six recessions or you name it, but that’s [just] part of the capitalistic system.

We will have them — and it won’t change anything Berkshire invests in. It may offer us more opportunities, in marketable securities or businesses. If we see a business [we like] — [even if] that [yield curve] inversion has gone to a hundred basis points, we’re going to buy it. And we will buy it enthusiastically.

The full transcript will go out to paid subscribers early next week. If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, there’s no time like the present.

More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…

Berkshire Hathaway’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Taylor Morrison cleared an important hurdle this week. On Wednesday, the Arizona-based homebuilder held a special meeting to vote on the deal — and shareholders overwhelmingly signaled their support for joining Berkshire with ~97% of all votes cast in favor of the move.

Brooks just earned some of the best marketing that money can’t buy. Last weekend, Scottish runner Josh Kerr shattered the world record for the mile, one of track and field’s longest-standing records, running it in 3:42.66 at the London Diamond League. And did so wearing a custom speed suit and race spike (shoes) made in partnership with sponsor Brooks. The whole campaign was dubbed “Project 222” — a nod to the 222 seconds needed to break the record. Kudos to Josh and Brooks!

Alphabet posted double-digit revenue growth for the twelfth straight quarter. “Our AI investments are redefining what’s possible across every part of our business,” said CEO Sundar Pichai. “Q2 was an amazing quarter, with Alphabet revenues growing 24% year-over-year [to $119.8 billion] and Google Cloud revenues accelerating to 82% growth, driven by demand for AI infrastructure and AI solutions.”

• The tech conglomerate’s Q2 capital expenditures hit a record $44.9 billion, with 60% spent on technical infrastructure and 40% on data centers and networking equipment. Alphabet now forecasts cap-ex for the full year to reach $195-205 billion, up from previous guidance for $180-190 billion. And *gulp* Google execs expect that number to climb even higher next year.

Coca-Cola’s $3 billion Fairlife dairy brand has been forced to suspend all U.S. production after a recent ransomware attack. Hackers accessed a portion of Fairlife’s systems, including those related to production, which led to operations being taken offline indefinitely. “Product quality and safety have not been impacted,” said Coke. The ransomware group Anubis has since claimed responsibility and threatened a data leak if not paid. (Fairlife’s Canadian operations are not affected by this odd situation.)

Kraft Heinz and The Walt Disney Company inked a long-term strategic alliance to bring fan-favorite food brands like Heinz, Philadelphia, and Kraft Mac & Cheese to the Disney Parks. Notably, Heinz will become the exclusive condiment supplier across Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and the Disney Cruise Lines — echoing the kind of built-in visibility that Coca-Cola has long enjoyed as Disney’s official soft drink partner. KHC can also now use Disney characters on select retail products.

• For Kraft Heinz president Nicolas Amaya — who followed CEO Steve Cahillane over from Kellogg — it’s time to dream big. “That’s what marketing is about today,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s about creating experiences that are memorable.” Translation: expect condiments to get a serious glow-up, starting with lightsaber-shaped ketchup dispensers in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

American Express is once again the safest name in plastic, notching its 19th consecutive year with the lowest U.S. fraud rate among major card networks. The secret weapon behind its fraud-fighting success? A steady, aggressive bet on technology. The company’s adaptive machine-learning models can flag a fraudulent purchase within milliseconds of a swipe. And its proprietary generative AI system has now doubled the number of fraud cases resolved on the spot.

• “Fraud is constantly evolving,” said executive vice president Amber Gupta, “and so are we. For years, American Express has been at the forefront of applying AI and machine learning to fraud prevention — and we continue to build on those capabilities today, investing in the technology and talent needed to stay ahead.”

Part of what makes following Berkshire so much fun is randomly stumbling onto pieces of the empire that you’d never even heard about before. This week’s example: AM Best reaffirmed the excellent financial strength and credit ratings on two obscure Berkshire-owned insurers, Old United Casualty Company (OUC) and Old United Life Insurance Company (OUL). OUC writes vehicle service contracts for auto dealerships owned by Berkshire Hathaway Automotive — with ~90% of written premiums coming from Kansas alone. AM Best praised its “track record of stable and strong operating performance” and “consistently profitable underwriting results”.

• OUL is the smaller, quieter sibling. It sells credit life and credit accident/health insurance — essentially, insurance coverage that pays off a loan if the borrower suffers death or disability. That business is, admittedly, fading as consumer preferences shift away from these products and more towards vehicle service contracts. OUC and OUL might make up only a small, unglamorous corner of the trillion-dollar conglomerate, but are also a reminder that Berkshire’s insurance operations aren’t just GEICO and reinsurance giants. There’s an entire layer of niche, hyper-local insurers quietly chipping in behind the scenes.

Shortly before this issue went to press, Berkshire subsidiary CORT Business Services announced the acquisition of Dwellworks Living. “By combining Dwellworks Living’s expertise in temporary living with CORT’s resources, scale, and long-standing leadership in mobility-related services, the combined organization will be positioned to deliver even greater value to clients and partners worldwide,” read the press release. The deal is expected to close at the end of this month.

Buffett welcomed Becky Quick and crew back to Omaha last week for a wide-ranging, nearly hour-long conversation. The official occasion was his annual donation to four family foundations — and the conspicuous absence of the Gates Foundation from the recipients list — but he also proved characteristically candid on a much broader range of topics that Berkshire Hathaway shareholders will surely want to hear.

The full interview is well worth a watch, but (in the interest of time) I’ve collected fifty of Buffett’s most memorable lines and comments down below.

On Berkshire Hathaway’s ~$30 billion investment in Alphabet/Google…

(1) “I initiated [our Alphabet investment]. I normally wouldn’t give you an answer on something like that, but I am not doing anything that [Greg Abel] doesn’t approve of. He’s not doing anything I don’t approve of. We talk all the time — every day — but he is the decider.”

(2) “We are always making the choice between whether we will buy marketable securities or a company [in whole]. We look at them the same way.”

(3) “The real question with Google and all of its competitors now, they’re all laying out hundreds of billions. That’s real money. That kind of money wasn’t even put in the railroad business, in terms of developing it. That’s the game they’re playing now. They weren’t playing that game with computer software.”

(4) “I made a mistake [not investing in Google when it was an asset-light company].”

(5) “I think [Google] is more likely to be a winner based on the record than probably 95% of what gets merchandised through Wall Street.”

(6) “I would say that I don’t like [Google] as well as at least four or five other businesses that we own.”

(7) “[The hyperscalers] are now playing a game they don’t want to play.”

On Greg Abel succeeding him atop Berkshire Hathaway…

(8) “Berkshire, that’s my painting. And I like the painting. I like the people associated with it. It’s been refined over time. I have added an apple over here [to it].”

• An excellent bit of wordplay from the Oracle here.

(9) “I don’t know of ten people in the United States who I would trust to hand [Berkshire] over to. I don’t know of five people — and I know a lot of people. I have a very high standard in terms of what I’m looking for in that person. And, clearly, we have found him with Greg Abel. That becomes more evident by the day.”

(10) “The only question is [Greg] is not immortal, either. You always have this mortality question and nobody gets away from it. People can be in marvelous health — or seem like it — [and then suddenly die]. There’s an enormous variation from being lucky to not being lucky.”

(11) “That’s the bet I make with Greg. I do not have a list of ten [possible replacements]. I don’t have ten kids, either. I don’t even have a list of three.”

(12) “I have got directors that I trust to be imbued with the concept of Berkshire Hathaway — and they would like to keep it going. So I’ve got the right group that’s the intermediary in making that choice. But things don’t always work out perfectly in the world.”

(13) “I’m losing marbles at this point. (Laughs) I accumulated marbles for a longer time than I deserved. That’s just a matter of luck. I have seen so many managers of our companies that [lost their marbles]. I think I have mentioned it in a few annual reports or annual meetings — we had guys cutting out paper dolls and their assistants [were] covering for them.”

(14) “I feel 100% [confident in Greg Abel]. I’ve seen him in a lot of situations. I felt that way with Charlie. I felt that way with Tom Murphy. But, you know, nobody expects you to pick out 25 husbands and have them all work out. Just finding one is pretty tough.”

On intelligent investing…

(15) “The important thing is to buy a good business and to buy it on the right terms and to get the right person to run it. When I say a very good business, I mean something that you can expect to earn high returns on capital over a long period of time.”

(16) “I can put huge amounts of money in government bonds and get $20-30-40 billion a year in terms of payments from them. So a good business is one that earns a lot more — and has prospects of continuing to earn a lot more — than the returns on essentially risk-less investments, which you could define as Treasuries.”

(17) “The trick in investing is to find businesses that are going to earn high returns on capital for an extended period of time. That’s what happened with Berkshire. A long period of time gets to be very important because those doubles later on are of very big numbers.”

(18) “Charlie Munger, my partner for many decades, just pounded the idea that it wasn’t a good business just because it was doing sexy things.”

(19) “I can’t recall a report on Wall Street that really gets into the internal rates of return that a business is actually earning. What’s more important than what a business is earning? But they ask all these questions about what will happen next quarter. It’s just ridiculous.”

(20) “If you have a wonderful business, you are going to be subject to attacks. It’s not a question of whether it was wonderful yesterday. The question is how long is it going to be wonderful?”

(21) “Wall Street thrives on convincing you that if you listen to them, they’ve got something that nobody else has. Which can’t be true. It’s ridiculous.”

On Apple, Tim Cook’s retirement, and the tech giant’s lawsuit against OpenAI…

(22) “There was no move [Apple] could make to replace Tim that I would have liked. (Laughs) If you’ve got Stradivarius playing the violin for you, don’t spend the next 300 years looking for another one. You have got one already.”

(23) “I know more about Apple than I knew many years ago. But, on the other hand, if you’re Apple, you have got very, very smart people all over the world shooting [at you] and trying to figure out how to make sure that Apple’s future isn’t as bright as in the past.”

(24) “Most companies would love to try to steal trade secrets. They wouldn’t love getting caught. But if you really could dig deep into the hearts of managers, they’d like to steal secrets. Wouldn’t you, if you had a business and you were struggling along and the guy next door was making money?”

On the speculative nature of today’s stock market…

(25) “There are times when opportunities are just thrown at you so fast [that] it’s unbelievable. And then there are other times when you’re very, very lucky if you find one thing in a couple of years.”

(26) “It’s tough to find values when everybody is preferring gambling.”

(27) “People’s enthusiasm for gambling is enormous.”

(28) “Since humans love to gamble so much, there’s more money in cultivating gamblers than there is in cultivating investors. If somebody bought Berkshire [stock] 40-50 years ago, a guy would have made one commission. And he should have spent the rest of his time telling the client, ‘Don’t do anything with it!’ And that’s just not the way [it goes]. We can’t expect that of humans. But, every now and then, you do find people that behave far better than other people.”

(29) “From the standpoint of the state, [legalized gambling] is sort of disgusting. The state needs money for all kinds of things — roads, schools, you name it — and they have found that they can clip people who are buying nothing but hope.”

On Coca-Cola’s $20 billion tax battle with the IRS…

(30) “I’ve got a dog in that fight, so… (Laughs) That’s why we have courts. Paying the extra money won’t break Coca-Cola any more than anything I can think of would break Berkshire. I mean, look, all I do is think about the downside. The upside will take care of itself.”

On management…

(31) “You either have happy customers or you don’t have [any] customers over time. And the customers are not dumb. Wall Street can be very dumb.”

(32) “Henry Ford owned the car business for 20-25 years and he brutally integrated like you cannot believe. He drove costs down. He got the cost of the Model T down, I think, to $285. He was always decreasing prices while increasing wages. He also was a little nuts in some ways — and that did him in finally when he converted over the Model A and General Motors just came racing by. My friend Charlie Munger thought that General Motors was going to be the dominant company. Who could imagine attacking their dealer fleet and everything they had going for them? [But] you’ve always got somebody shooting at you.”

(33) “I had a half-interest in a Sinclair filling station at 30th and Redick in Omaha when I was in my early twenties. I had been to business school and knew all these things. The guy next door had the Phillips station and was pumping 30,000 gallons a month. We were pumping 15,000 gallons a month. I said, ‘We’re going to wipe this guy off the face of the earth.’ And, a couple years later, we were selling 15,000 and he was selling 30,000 — and we gave up. I think he’s still operating. People are playing for keeps in business.”

On luck and gratitude…

(34) “Out of eight billion people, I may be one of the ten luckiest in the world. I’ve been lucky and healthy to get to 95. I’ve been lucky in that the field that intrigued me and where I had some natural ability, happened to be one that paid off in a way like nothing [else].”

(35) “Fortunately, I got exposed to what I liked to do very early on. That was just an accident. If my father had been a plumber, I would not have had the same advantage I had.”

(36) “America has been a wonderful place to invest money. The Dow Industrials, when I bought my first stock, had just crossed 100. Now, it’s 52,000 or something — and you have got dividends in between. The village idiot could have made it from that point forward, so I have been in the right game.”

On Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh…

(37) “I think he was a good choice.”

(38) “I admire him for taking on the job. I think he will do the best he can at achieving the job he was assigned to do — which is 2% inflation while maintaining maximum employment.”

(39) “He knows he can’t be perfect at it. Just like I knew I couldn’t be perfect at taking people’s money and earning super returns on it. But my guess is that people were right in realizing that I cared about what happened to their money — and I would say that Warsh cares about the country.”

On Bill Gates & The Gates Foundation…

(40) “I have read [Bill’s] remarks to Congress given under oath and I read the cross-examination. And, while it’s distasteful, while he made mistakes, I [have] made mistakes in hiring all kinds of people or choosing friends and then finding out later that, one way or another, they weren’t what I thought they were.”

(41) “I have had situations where I made mistakes about people — or people may have felt they made mistakes about me — but life goes on.”

(42) “No one bats 1.000 in the business of choosing people.”

(43) “[Bill] came by almost three weeks ago — I lose track of time — and we spent three hours talking together.”

(44) “I don’t know whether I have done dumber things [than Bill’s association with Jeffrey Epstein], but I have done many dumb things in life. All I have to do is look at our portfolio. I mean, at least four out of five of the decisions I have made have not been anything out of the ordinary.”

On philanthropy…

(45) “My idea and conviction was that I would compound money at a better rate than society generally and that [my first wife] Susie would give it away better than 99.9% of the people who were giving it away. She would get involved personally with the gifts. I like to do things wholesale and she liked to do things retail.”

(46) “I admired [my dad] more than anybody in the world, but it still didn’t mean that I joined his church or did anything identically. And he encouraged that view. He would quote Emerson to me, where Emerson said something to the effect that the force in you is new in nature. You’re one of a kind. Find out what that one is. I found it very young, [but] my kids did not. They behaved like most kids. They flirted with a lot of different ideas. But I feel 100% now about what I have seen them do [that they are ready to give away my money].”

(47) “I tell the three children that it’s their responsibility to get it done well. You may find this hard to believe, but it’s true — I have never looked at their Form 990s, which they file. I’m not judging each action as it takes place because you take actions where you think there’s only a 10% or 20% probability of success. It’s not like investing.”

(48) “The money was important in terms of what it could actually do for other people. It wasn’t important for what it could do for me. I have not denied myself anything in life.”

(49) “I felt the most important threat to mankind was the nuclear bomb. I had sort of grandiose plans in my mind about how I could change the probabilities of that happening — and I finally came to the conclusion, after decades, that I could not have a hundredth or a thousandth of one percent chance of succeeding in that.”

(50) “You can’t mandate [philanthropy]. It isn’t philanthropy if you mandate it. But most people are a combination of lots of good instincts and lots of not-so-good instincts. Including me. If you do things that appeal to their better instincts, they respond. Sometimes.”

Notably, for the first time in two decades, the Gates Foundation was not a recipient — and will remain on the outside looking in as Buffett permanently redirects his charitable gifts to four family foundations administered by his children.

The bigger headline, though, is that he plans to accelerate the pace of giving dramatically — aiming to dispose of all of his Berkshire shares within the next eight years. “Of course,” Buffett wrote in the accompanying press release, “mortality is unpredictable, but my remaining shares will be donated to the four foundations one way or the other by December 31, 2034.”

He now owns 188,290 Class A shares and 1,162 Class B shares, which works out to 29.7% of the aggregate voting power and 13.2% of the economic interest of Berkshire.

During the interview with CNBC, he touched on many topics — including his decision to drop the Gates Foundation, his unwavering support for Greg Abel as Berkshire’s chief executive, the gambling mood of the modern stock market, and even his thoughts on new Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh.

But, to me, the major story is that Buffett admitted he was the one who “initiated” Berkshire’s sizable investment in Alphabet (or Google).

Back when Berkshire first purchased shares of the tech conglomerate in Q3 2025, I hoped that it was Buffett if only because it meant he had found one last big swing before riding off into retirement — and that it would close the circle on his earlier laments about having “missed out” on Google.

He was quick to add, though, that he doesn’t do anything that Abel doesn’t sign off on — meaning that his successor approves of the Google position, too. Which is a good thing considering it’s valued at more than $32 billion and ranks behind only Apple, American Express, and (sometimes) Coca-Cola in Berkshire’s stock portfolio.

“I think [Google] is more likely to be a winner based on the record than probably 95% of what gets merchandised through Wall Street,” said Buffett. “[But] I don’t like it as well as at least four or five other businesses that we own.”

Earlier in the interview, Buffett noted that he looks at big portfolio holdings (like Apple) the same as owned subsidiaries like BNSF Railway or BHE. And, when you group them all together, Google clocks in at either the fifth- or sixth-largest. I think that’s what he’s referring to in the above quote.

Basically, if he liked Google more than the businesses above it, he would buy more shares and it would already be higher up on the list.

“The real question with Google and all of its competitors now is they are all laying out hundreds of billions [on capital expenditures],” said Buffett.

“That’s real money. That kind of money wasn’t even put into the railroad business, in terms of developing it. That’s the game they are playing now. They weren’t playing that game with computer software.”

A complete overview of Buffett’s latest interview will be coming your way on Monday.

More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…

Get well soon, Warren! Becky Quick also revealed that Buffett, who turns 96 next month, broke his leg a few weeks ago. He had surgery to fix the issue and is already back on his feet (albeit with some assistance while walking).

• “He does say that he has been really lucky in that he hasn’t broken a leg in his life until now,” said Quick. “And that while he has a lot to be thankful for, he’s no longer thankful for the fact that he has never broken his leg.” 🤣

Over on X, Bill noticed that Buffett’s charitable disclosure filing signals that Berkshire ramped up share repurchases in a big way since the end of Q1 2026. His calculations show that Berkshire’s outstanding share count has dropped by 0.8%, which puts the pace of current repurchases “at a level not seen since 2021”.

The National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report on the NetJets crash that killed one person last month. The Cessna Citation Latitude was forced into an emergency landing on a Texas highway after electrical and fuel system problems developed mid-flight. In the process, the plane struck several light poles, hit a moving vehicle, and rolled onto its side on a highway overpass.

• NetJets CEO Adam Johnson emailed customers after the report’s release. “NetJets has maintained one of the strongest safety records in the history of aviation,” he wrote. “The crew involved in this event responded to an extraordinarily complex and unprecedented series of circumstances with professionalism, discipline, and dedication to passenger safety.” Johnson added that this marked the first time one of its Latitude aircraft had experienced “cascading DC and AC generator failures and a corresponding fuel-line failure” after more than 7.2 million engine hours flown. In response, NetJets will now require enhanced inspections on generators and fuel-line sensors across its entire fleet.

Taylor Morrison was named to TIME’s list of “America’s Best Companies” — coming in at #356 and earning the distinction of highest-ranked homebuilder. “Being recognized as the top homebuilder on TIME’s inaugural ranking — a ranking that celebrates the characteristics defining what responsible, future-ready businesses should be — is an incredible honor,” said CEO Sheryl Palmer. “This list celebrates brands leading with innovation, accountability, and sustainable growth — all key pillars that guide Taylor Morrison into our exciting future ahead.”

• Plenty of Berkshire-related companies made the list, with both Apple and Alphabet cracking the top ten (and American Express not far behind them). But I must take issue with any ranking of America’s best companies that puts Berkshire itself at #701. Color me very skeptical.

According to the IDC market research firm, Apple posted another strong quarter in China despite a wider slowdown in that country’s smartphone market. Q2 2026 smartphone shipments fell 4.3% in China — the fifth straight quarter of decline — but Apple and Huawei managed to defy the trend. iPhone shipments grew 24.4% year over year, lifting Apple into second place in overall market share at 18.1%.

• In other Apple news, the tech giant sued OpenAI and io — the hardware design startup co-founded by Jony Ive and other Apple employees — for allegedly stealing trade secrets. OpenAI acquired io last year in a $6.5 billion deal.

The battle over the Union Pacific x Norfolk Southern merger continues to rage. Union Pacific executive vice president Kenny Rocker recently accused BNSF Railway and CPKC of threatening their customers not to support the proposed merger. Both railroads immediately — and strenuously — disputed the claim. “The allegation runs contrary to BNSF’s culture and values,” spokesman Zak Anderson told Trains. “It’s disappointing to see UP continue their baseless claims and rhetoric to distract from the central question before them — how consolidating 50% of all U.S. rail freight in one company enhances competition and doesn’t raise affordability issues for rail customers and the American consumer.”

• This might be a case of projection on UP’s part. Just a few weeks ago, Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin mentioned in a congressional hearing that rail customers had called her office complaining that Union Pacific was threatening retaliation against anyone who opposed the merger.

And, finally, a couple must-reads for the weekend…

• The Wall Street Journal dives into the current frenzy for turbines — from both airlines and hyperscalers — and how only a few companies make the parts to build them. Happily, Berkshire-owned Precision Castparts is one of them.

• Charlie Munger earned the nickname “The Abominable No-Man” for a reason. Hedge Fund Alpha shows the many ways we can embrace the “Power of No!”

“We joke that Himalaya is an academic institution where Li Lu is the professor, I’m the teaching assistant, and the analysts are the students,” said chief operating officer and managing director Jing (Gene) Chang.

But, today, we get to be the students.

A reader kindly sent me the transcript of a recent conversation between Jing Chang and prominent Chinese economist Guan Qingyou, in which the Himalaya executive discusses value investing, market psychology, intellectual honesty, and much more.

I’ve collected forty of Chang’s best comments from the interview below.

(Note: As far as I know, this conversation was never translated into English — so I had to lean heavily on translation software here. I also slightly cleaned up some of the wording to make it more readable and understandable, but without changing the meaning of Chang’s comments. The result is probably more stilted than hearing him speak in his native language, but I think I managed to capture his main message in a clear way for us English readers.)

For a quick background on Chang himself, he was born in China and came to the United States in 1990. He met Li Lu as a student at Columbia Business School in the mid-nineties and now works side by side with his friend at Himalaya, where Chang also ranks as the longest-serving employee (other than Li Lu himself). He was involved in translating and publishing Poor Charlie’s Almanack in China and even helped start a value investing course at Peking University in 2015.

(1) “If we do things as objectively and rationally as possible in the little things in life, it can also help us to remain objective and rational in major investment decisions. I think the two are one. If we don’t have the spirit of objectivity and rationality in our daily life, how can we guarantee that we will suddenly be objective and rational when making major decisions?”

(2) “For value investors, the role of the stock market is only to tell us a ‘price’. It cannot tell us what the ‘value’ of the company is.”

(3) “The core principle of value investment [is that] we must have a margin of safety. It will help us screen out the vast majority of companies that do not meet our standards. The targets left behind will be much safer to invest in — and the probability of failure, especially the possibility of permanent damage to principal, will be much smaller.”

(4) “If there is enough margin of safety, we don’t have to worry about the short-term fluctuations of the market at all.”

(5) “Of course, when the market fluctuates significantly, it will challenge the underlying logic of our understanding of the company. Was my past judgment right? Is this judgment sustainable and reliable? Am I sure that the company will be able to survive this fluctuation? If we can be sure of this, we definitely don’t need to sell. Instead, we can hold it for a long time — and even increase our position when the stock price falls — because we can see the future of the company clearly and reliably enough.”

(6) “Most ordinary investors are trend trackers. They will follow the trend and buy what the market says. And if the market weakens, they will leave quickly. Even professional investors often can’t pull themselves [free from] the mood of the market.”

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People who build great things should reap great rewards.

What makes the American experiment remarkable is that those same rewards are available to the rest of us, too.

The founders wrote that all men are created equal — not that all men would end up equal. The American Dream was never a promise of guaranteed outcomes, but one of opportunity. The chance to build a good life from any starting point and to strive for something better through your own honest effort.

And nowhere is that opportunity more real than in the stock market — where anyone, not just the people who build the future, can own a piece of it.

I often come back to the iPhone. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs walked onstage and held up that original device, it felt like the entire world took notice. Anyone watching that day who sensed that this small slab of glass and aluminum was about to change everything could have gotten in on the action with a few clicks on their computer.

(Or, if that’s too speculative for you, you could have been like Warren Buffett and waited nearly a decade after the iPhone reveal to jump in. And still made a killing.)

That’s the beauty of public markets. Millions of ordinary people — anyone, really — can own a sliver of the companies reshaping the world. You don’t need the talent to build the product. You don’t need the vision to imagine what others can’t. You just need the judgment to spot something real, the conviction to back it with your own money, and the patience to let the magic of compounding do its thing.

Not every stock is Apple, obviously. But you don’t need to pick Apple — or any individual company — to do well owning American business broadly.

And, happily, almost every barrier standing between you and said ownership has fallen away in recent years. Not that long ago, you needed a stockbroker, a steep account minimum, round lots of 100 shares, and fees that ate into your returns before the snowball could even start rolling. Today, fractional shares make investing possible with a single dollar — and commissions have all but disappeared.

The door is wide open for anyone willing to walk through it.

More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…

J2 Labs, a Boca Raton-based family office, took a page out of Warren Buffett’s book. Literally. It has begun running an advertisement in the South Florida Sun Sentinel very closely modeled on Buffett’s own 1986 invitation for owners to sell their businesses to Berkshire Hathaway. A clever bit of financial-world nostalgia marketing, paired with a bet that authenticity and simplicity can still cut through the noise of the AI era.

BNSF Railway is turning last year’s safety milestones into the new normal. After posting the safest year in company history in 2025, the Berkshire-owned railroad has gotten off to an even better start this year. Through mid-June, BNSF’s injury frequency ratio (-28%), rail equipment incidents (-12%), and total injuries (-31%) are all down big year-over-year. “We’ve led the industry for the last decade in fewest train incidents,” said communications director Kendall Kirkham Sloan. “We’ve maintained our status as a safety leader because it’s non-negotiable for us, embedded into our culture, and a main ingredient to maintaining our unmatched service.”

If you’ve caught any World Cup coverage this summer, you’ve likely spotted Bank of America signs and branding around the pitch. The Charlotte-based bank, still a top-five holding in Berkshire’s portfolio despite recent trims, became FIFA’s first-ever banking sponsor in a deal reportedly worth many tens of millions (possible even up as high as $100 million). CEO Brian Moynihan tells the Boston Globe this has been money well spent, calling the tournament’s economic ripple effect both real and welcome. “Our goal, as this came to the United States, was we could work with FIFA to bring soccer to the local markets,” he said. “We feel very good about what we’ve seen so far.”

Sirius XM CEO Jennifer Witz, speaking from the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, told CNBC that the satellite radio service’s turnaround is taking hold. “We reset the strategy in late 2024,” she said. “We have three core priorities — and we are delivering against each one of those. We are improving the subscriber experience at Sirius XM and the overall economics by focusing on our core in-car audiences. On the ad side of the business, we continue to build that and grow our business — especially with our new YouTube partnership. We’re now reaching 255 million listeners across the U.S. and Canada. And, then, we’re driving efficiencies across the company and that’s helping drive profitability and, ultimately, for [improved] cash flow generation.”

Berkshire’s Richline Group — a metals and jewelry manufacturer — promoted two executives into newly-created roles to better bring the company’s various businesses under unified corporate management. Arien Gessner steps into the role of chief revenue officer and Moss Makhoulian becomes senior vice president of supply chain and operations. “I am pleased to announce these two promotions in support of our longer-term strategy,” said Richline CEO Dave Meleski. “These expanded roles speak to the confidence we have in them as we plan for the future of our company.”

And, to finish off the week, a word from Warren Buffett on how the liquidity and real-time pricing of stock markets can eat away at an investor’s discipline. (This was filmed in February 2020, shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic.)

A fitting backdrop to ring in America’s 250th birthday from our 50th state.

This promises to be a special holiday weekend for many — but none more so than for Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel. The Alberta native, who has long called the American heartland home, became a U.S. citizen last month.

And did so in quintessentially American fashion.

Abel was sworn in via a naturalization ceremony held at an Iowa Cubs minor league baseball game, where he also threw out the first pitch. True to his low-key style, there wasn’t a word about him running one of the world’s most-valuable companies.

Though Abel did rock a pretty sweet American flag belt to mark the occasion.

Warren Buffett teased the news of his successor’s impending citizenship at the AGM — and now it’s official. “It means something to him to become an American citizen,” Buffett told CNBC, holding that feeling up as part of the “special sauce” that makes this country so successful. Glad to have Greg on board in time for the 250th!

More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…

The Wall Street Journal reports that Warren Buffett will delay his traditional mid-year donation to the Gates Foundation until an investigation into its ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein plays out. The review, conducted by the law firm WilmerHale, should be complete sometime this summer. Buffett said back in March that he hasn’t spoken to Bill Gates since the Epstein Files were released — a timeline Gates himself confirmed last month in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

• The article also noted that while Gates was not formally barred from the Berkshire AGM this year, he was told he couldn’t sit on the floor with other VIPs like Apple CEO Tim Cook. In the end, he chose not to attend.

Taylor Morrison released a proxy statement to shareholders — and laid out the entire timeline of its acquisition by Berkshire. It all started when an unnamed homebuilder offered $71 a share for TM late last year. That offer spurred the company to shop itself around, approaching six other (somewhat) interested parties — none of whom bit. Goldman Sachs then connected CEO Sheryl Palmer with Abel in April, given Berkshire’s long history in homebuilding. The pair met in-person three times in May before agreeing to $72.50 a share (which was also the 52-week high closing price).

• An interesting wrinkle: It wasn’t until May 30 — one day before the deal was publicly announced — that Abel told Palmer he wanted her to stay on as CEO.

Nick Sleep and Qais Zakaria made almost all of their money at Nomad Investment Partnership from just three investments: Amazon, Costco, and Berkshire Hathaway. Richer, Wiser, Happier author William Green recently shared an excerpt from an unpublished interview with Sleep that captures the logic behind this unusually concentrated approach. “What we got right was we knew we weren’t very good on lots of things,” said Sleep, “so it made sense to us only to have a few shares, because those were the only things we ever understood and we ever really knew.”

Stripe co-founder John Collison echoed his friend Charlie Munger’s philosophy on the value of multidisciplinary education on a recent episode of the TBPN podcast. And, specifically, he urged students to pursue double majors and learn the big ideas from different disciplines to set them apart as AI reshapes the job market. “Charlie talked about the importance of being multidisciplinary,” said Collison. “He thinks getting a functional understanding of many disciplines is not that hard. You can just go read the books now or you can talk to your AI about it. I think multidisciplinary thinkers are going to do incredibly well.”

Dairy Queen is heading back to Puerto Rico — with plans to open twenty restaurants across the island over the next decade. The first will open in San Juan in early 2027. “We are pleased to add Puerto Rico as a market for DQ restaurants,” said international COO Nicolas Boudet. “This new deal expands our established footprint in the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico.”

Last year, Berkshire created the BH Jewelry Group to house subsidiaries Helzberg Diamonds and Ben Bridge Jeweler. And, now, we might be seeing the first bits of synergy arising from this arrangement. The Ben Bridge location at Pearlridge Center in Hawaii will reportedly switch to sister brand Helzberg at the end of this month.

Barron’s notes that two of Berkshire investment manager Ted Weschler’s most significant stock picks crushed the market in 1H 2026. Davita has gained 105.1% so far this year, while Sirius XM clocks in at a still-mighty-impressive 48.7%.

In the final week of June, Berkshire once again topped up its stakes in two of the Japanese trading houses. According to filings, the conglomerate now owns 10.83% of Mitsui and 10.32% of Marubeni. This comes after similar additions to Mitsubishi and Sumitomo back in May. Presumably, then, we might see something pop up with Itochu in the next month or two.

Becky Quick: First of all, thank you for having us here at what is the first meeting of the new Berkshire. The first time in sixty years that it has a new CEO who’s heading up this meeting. What is this like for you, this first time out?

Greg Abel: Thank you for being here. We’re so excited to be here in Omaha. It is a great tradition. And, yes, [it’s] the first time in sixty years [without Warren Buffett]. Fortunately, Warren will be a part of it — and we’re excited by that.

We have our owners here. And these couple days — and especially on Saturday — it’s owners’ day. It’s their day. Warren brought this amazing commitment to Berkshire and deep understanding — and I want them to know that remains. That there’s a team, myself included, that are absolutely committed and have a deep understanding of Berkshire and we bring that same passion every day.

What’s going to be different at the meeting this year?

There is some evolution that, hopefully, our owners/shareholders enjoy.

One of the things we’ll be doing is introducing some other managers — and that was very purposeful. When you walk around here and [see] all these businesses, we have exceptional leadership in the businesses and we very much operate it with this ownership mentality. It’s their businesses.

What we want is to, on stage, let all the owners, all the shareholders, those watching CNBC, start to see the depth of management in Berkshire.

How did you pick the managers [that will be on stage]? I understand Adam because he’s obviously in this new management role.1 Katie Farmer is going to be on stage, too. What made you get to those people that you will be bringing up [on stage]?

It started with the thought that, on the insurance side, we have Ajit [Jain]. But, someday, we will add in an insurance manager [on stage] and things like that. The idea was, if you think of insurance, there is no one better than Ajit — and the world needs to hear him and see him. But, equally, we have a deep team now. And that’s something I’ve been so excited by.

When Warren made the announcement last May, as we all know, the first thing he did was pull together the senior leaders on the insurance side. It was a small meeting in Omaha — Warren, I, Ajit, and, say, five other of the senior leaders in insurance.

Warren was very open about, “Okay, this is our new team.” I was the first to say that I’ve [still] got a lot to understand and learn. I had some knowledge on it from spending a lot of time with Ajit and being on certain boards, but that was really exciting to see the depth of that team. It felt really good to know who was behind Ajit.2

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As we head into the dog days of summer, if you’re anything like me, you’re always on the hunt for something new to read. The latest addition to my bookshelf is the new 25th anniversary edition of The Warren Buffett CEO by Robert Miles, which came out a few days before Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting.

I caught up with Miles to learn more about the new edition — and how Berkshire has managed to find (and keep) some of the best leaders in the business.

Can you run through the new material added to this 25th anniversary edition?

All of the original chapters profiling twenty CEOs have been updated with a review of each subsidiary’s results, as well as management changes.

The majority have retired or passed away — with three continuing into the next quarter century: Ajit Jain [was] promoted to vice chairman of insurance and Irv Blumkin [was] promoted to chairman of Nebraska Furniture Mart and his brother Ron [was] promoted to vice chairman.

The Warren Buffett CEO — 25th Anniversary Edition includes, for the first time, a chapter and profile on Warren Buffett’s successor, Greg Abel. His chapter illustrates the change from Buffett “the teacher” to Abel “the coach”.

For the first time, Charlie Shamieh — the likely successor to Ajit Jain — is profiled with a very remarkable life story.

New chapters also include the recently resigned GEICO CEO Todd Combs; Ted Weschler, Berkshire’s investment manager responsible for managing a $20 billion equity portfolio and the point man for Berkshire’s Apple investment; Don Wurster, president of National Indemnity, the world’s largest insurance company; Kevin Clayton, family manager of Clayton Homes, America’s largest home builder; and Katie Farmer, CEO of BNSF (and the first woman CEO of any railroad in the world).

Each chapter illustrates the Berkshire ethos of trust, independence, and management excellence as Berkshire became the largest and most successful conglomerate and business exemplar.

The original edition examined the unusual level of autonomy that Buffett allowed his managers. How has that model held up over the past 25 years? And how do you think it will evolve under Greg Abel?

Each major earnings contributor is likely to grow under Abel’s leadership as the conglomerate shifts from Buffett “the teacher” to Abel “the coach”.

Macro-management is so entrenched that any attempt to micro-manage or change the deeply-rooted culture would result in mass resignations. Most long-term Berkshire managers are no longer working for money, but because they enjoy what they’re doing.

As the baton passes from Warren to Greg, the successor set new precedents: (1) he committed 100% of his after-tax salary to buying Berkshire shares on the open market each year that he is CEO, and (2) he committed to running Berkshire for twenty years. These two pledges are unparalleled in the for-profit corporate world and speak loud and clear to Berkshire’s sustainable culture and management continuation.

After studying Berkshire for so long, is there anything about Buffett’s management philosophy that is still misunderstood or under-appreciated?

When I asked Warren what he is most proud of, he said — without hesitation — “Never having lost a subsidiary CEO to a competitor.” And when I asked him how he would measure his successor, he said, if [the successor] too could say, “I never lost a subsidiary CEO to a competitor.”

Twenty-five years later, the record is still intact — and I suspect that, over the next twenty years under Abel’s coaching, the record will continue to stand and Berkshire will continue to be a model of attracting and keeping talented managers.

More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…

It’s just about that time again — when Warren Buffett announces his mid-year charitable donations to a handful of family foundations and, at least historically, the Gates Foundation. This year, though, Gates might be out of luck. Buffett publicly hedged on whether that foundation would remain a recipient of his largesse — telling CNBC’s Becky Quick in March that he hadn’t made a final decision on that yet.

In the meantime, Buffett has not gone totally silent. For Time’s recent profile of NBA superstar LeBron James — named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Sports — he offered a simple verdict on his friend’s business acumen. “The guy is smart,” said Buffett. “He’s a smart guy on the court [and] he’s a smart guy off the court.”

TerraLithium, an Occidental Petroleum subsidiary, and BHE Renewables just reached two technical milestones that could move their direct lithium extraction project from promising experiment to commercial reality. The joint venture — formed in 2024 — reportedly demonstrated the ability to pull lithium chloride from geothermal brine, convert it into lithium hydroxide using a commercial-scale electrolyzer, and produce battery-grade lithium carbonate. (Please don’t ask me to explain any of that.) But, in layman’s terms, these compounds are integral in the production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, cell phones, and more.

Tim Cook said price increases were on the way — and, yesterday, they arrived. Apple hiked prices across many product lines, including all iPads and Macs, though popular items like iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods were left untouched (for now). “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” the company said in a statement. “We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products. We know this is not welcome news and we are working tirelessly to find solutions.”

The world’s first Dairy Queen — located in Joliet, Illinois — will soon be reborn. Not as a working restaurant, but as a full-blown Route 66 landmark to coincide with the famous highway’s 100th anniversary. “It seems appropriate that International Dairy Queen also shares its story with another American icon — the original alignment of Route 66, one of the most recognizable roads in the world,” said the museum’s CEO. For road-trippers chasing the Mother Road this centennial year, this should be one more reason to pull over in Joliet.

In a Fox Business interview this week, Delta CEO Ed Bastian touted the progress his airline has made in recent years — including the return of a certain shareholder. “We’ve got all of our investment-grade ratings back from all three agencies,” he said, “which I’m proud of. We continue to pay down debt even further. [And] we just had a great validation that Berkshire came back into our stock. They are one of our largest shareholders right now, which is great to see.”

As part of a global restructuring, Kraft Heinz will consolidate its operations into three regions — North America, Europe & Pacific Developed Markets, and Emerging Markets — to more effectively deploy resources. “We are building momentum across many areas of the business,” said CEO Steve Cahillane, “and this regional structure will help us meaningfully accelerate and scale our progress.”

Mark Tobak over at Hedge Fund Alpha uses the words of Charlie Munger, Benjamin Franklin, and Lee Kuan Yew (among others) to make the case that societal wealth disparities can be better solved via personal financial discipline than public policy. Almost anyone can build wealth by saving a modest percentage of earnings and letting compound interest do the rest over multiple decades. Consistency and time matter much more than the size of your paycheck.

Chevron agreed to power Microsoft’s new data center in Texas via natural gas for the next twenty years. The project will deliver roughly 2.67 gigawatts of capacity — with most of that power coming from large gas turbines supplied by GE Vernova. Critically, the facility will be entirely dedicated to the data center and will not connect to the local grid at all, which should mitigate any impact on consumers in the region.

“The world is not driven by greed,” he said. “It’s driven by envy.”

This simple statement inverts the story we usually tell ourselves about the ills of modern life. We typically reach for greed as the default villain. Wall Street greed. Corporate greed. Political greed. The list goes on and on.

It’s a tidy enough explanation — but, in Charlie’s mind, the wrong one.

Whereas greed focuses on what you want for yourself, envy is relational. It has nothing to do with what you have, but what they have that you don’t. That distinction explains much about the psychology of human discontent.

A greedy person can, in theory, be satisfied. Enough wealth, enough status, enough comfort — and their appetite might be quelled. At least for a while.

Envy offers no such satiation. It’s a moving target defined purely by comparison, recalibrated the instant someone else pulls ahead of you. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve personally gained or achieved, how tall the pile you currently stand on. But, rather, the gap between your pile and theirs.

The complaint of the envious mind is almost never “I don’t have enough to survive” — but “they have so much more than me and it isn’t fair”.

Charlie marveled at how the citizens of a miraculous age — freed from so much of the depredation and misery of human history — could still seem so dissatisfied.

“The fact [is] that everybody is 5x better off than they used to be,” he said, “[but] they take it for granted. All they think about is somebody else having more now when it’s not fair that he should have it and they don’t.”

This explains envy’s uniquely corrosive effect on both society and the soul. Greed, left unchecked, leads to wretched excess. Envy, though, births grievance.

“I can’t change the fact that a lot of people are very unhappy and feel very abused after everything has improved by about 600%,” said Charlie, “[just] because there’s still somebody else [out there] who has more.”

By almost any measure our ancestors would recognize, we live in a golden age. Yet so many people still seem so unhappy. We got the abundance — almost an unfathomable amount — but not the contentment that was supposed to come along with it.

This isn’t entirely our fault. Envy is likely hardwired into us. For nearly our entire history as a species, humans lived in small groups where relative status carried real survival consequences. If your neighbor had more food, more allies, more influence, that gap was not so much an annoying inconvenience as a legitimate threat to your safety and your chances of passing on your genes.

The biological hardware built for that world stills runs inside us, even though our social environment has changed beyond recognition. The small tribe is no more — replaced by an infinite, scrolling feed of the richest, most attractive, most accomplished, most celebrated people on the planet. Our ancient status-monitoring instincts never stood a chance when faced with this deluge of noise.

The unhappy result is a civilization that has essentially solved most of its objective problems — starvation, plague, predation, freezing to death — and replaced them with something new and strange: a subjective crisis of perpetual inadequacy.

We engineered our way out of scarcity and walked straight into a hall of mirrors.

Charlie noted, many times, that envy is a uniquely useless sin. The only one without any apparent upside — not even in the heat of the moment. Gluttony, at least, yields a nice meal or two. Lust, a roll in the hay.

Envy, though, gives nothing.

No pleasure. No benefit. No momentary (though fleeting) payoff.

Just suffering — and the bad behavior it tends to provoke on the way out.

“So many people ruin their lives unnecessarily,” he once said. “Envy is such a stupid thing to have because you can’t possibly have any fun with that particular sin. Who in the hell ever had any fun with envy? What good could envy possibly do for you? Somebody always is going to be doing better than you are — so it’s really stupid.”

That’s simply arithmetic, not injustice.

Imagine how easy it would have been for Charlie to succumb to bitterness and envy. He may have had all the money he could ever want, but his life was not free of genuine anguish. His nine-year-old son died of leukemia back before the disease was treatable. Charlie sat with him at the hospital, day after day, and then walked the streets in tears at night. It would have been natural — understandable — for him to feel a stab of envy every time he encountered an intact family untouched by illness or loss.

But, instead, he chose to publicly celebrate the advances of modern medicine that meant fewer parents would ever have to walk that tragic road again.

Later, a botched cataract surgery left Charlie on the verge of blindness. A fate that would have robbed him of his favorite pastime: reading. He didn’t wallow in self-pity or resentment, but joked that he might have to learn braille.

This was not a man spared envy’s usual triggers.

He buried a child and lost an eye, but refused to allow comparison — whether to the lucky, to the healthy, to the sighted — to curdle into grievance.

Humanity has battled the scourge of envy for a very long time. “That’s the reason God came down and told Moses that you couldn’t envy your neighbor’s wife or even his donkey,” said Charlie. “Even the old Jews were having trouble with envy. It’s [just] built into the nature of things.”

It’s probably no coincidence that two of the Ten Commandments (at least in some traditions) deal directly with envy. That’s a notable amount of real estate to dedicate to a single emotion on a tablet with only ten lines to spare.

Almost like the man upstairs knew — thousands of years before modern psychology caught up — that envy was no minor character flaw. But a structural risk to individual lives and whole communities. And important enough to legislate against twice.

But, this week, she found herself on the other side of the microphone when she appeared on The Master Investor Podcast to discuss her career in financial journalism and two-decade run as Warren Buffett’s go-to interviewer and media confidante.

“What you see is what you get [with him],” said Quick. “He is authentic. He means it.”

Asked to name the real source of Buffett’s genius, she pointed to his patience. “He and Charlie have repeatedly said that one of the things they’re best at doing is nothing. There are a lot of people who feel like they have to act because the markets are going up and up. Warren has never had FOMO, that fear of missing out on things.”

That patience, she explained, is not altogether passive. It’s backed by a sharp grasp of compound interest, deep mathematical and actuarial instincts, and rare pattern recognition built over decades of reading annual reports and financial filings.

“He has built up an unbelievable knowledge base,” she said, “and he’s got basically a photographic memory. And having a calm, cool head and not getting caught up in the irrationality of markets at times — I think those are the combination of factors.”

It all started with a gutsy, off-the-cuff move. Nearly twenty years ago, Quick called Buffett about an unrelated matter and learned he was about to leave on a trip to China.

On a whim, she asked to tag along.

“He paused for what felt to me like five minutes,” she said, “[although] he swears it was only three to five seconds. But [it felt like] this eternity when you ask someone, ‘Can I come with you?’ and then you wait to see what they have to say. Finally, he said, ‘Well, I guess so.’”

And it was on their shared flight to China that the pair became fast friends. They ended up talking for hours, trading sections of the newspaper, and building a bedrock of trust and friendship that remains in place to this day.

“I talk to him multiple times every week,” she said.

More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…

A NetJets plane crashed along a Texas highway on Tuesday evening after the pilots reported mechanical issues and attempted an emergency diversion. One passenger (Capital Factory CEO Joshua Baer) was killed, while bystanders and first responders helped five others escape the burning wreckage. This marks the first fatal crash in the private jet company’s six-plus decades of service.

Becoming Katharine Graham — the film Warren Buffett called “a remarkable story of American history” — made its broadcast debut on PBS this week. Teddy Kunhardt, one of the directors, told WTTW that the project traces back to an earlier film his family made about Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. “[Buffett] called us and said, ‘I just want to let you guys know I love the film. I think it’s great, but you missed the mark.’ It was like an awkward silence and my father said, ‘What do you mean?’ And Warren said, ‘You only briefly touched on Katharine Graham. She was the key to the success of Ben Bradlee and The Washington Post.’”

CEO Tim Cook just confirmed what many Apple fans feared — prices are going up. In a Wall Street Journal interview, he called the price hikes “unavoidable” — explaining that Apple absorbed soaring memory and storage chip costs for as long as it could “but the situation has become unsustainable”.

As regular readers of this newsletter well know, Berkshire invested $10 billion in Alphabet as part of the tech giant’s recent $85 billion capital raise. , in a memo he circulated among financial friends, makes the case that Alphabet is — in his words — “Berkshire Hathaway 2.0”.

Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena hit back against claims that his proposed Norfolk Southern merger would choke off competition. Speaking in London this week, he pointed to BNSF Railway as proof the western United States would remain plenty contested. “We are competing against Berkshire-owned BNSF,” he said. “Last time I looked, they’re a $1 trillion company with $400 billion in the bank.”

In other BNSF news, the railroad’s 2025 Impact Report confirmed it to be the safest year in company history. Injury frequency dropped 7% and rail equipment incidents fell 13%. All while BNSF launched a new coast-to-coast intermodal service with CSX, reduced dwell time by 13% to historic lows, and handled record volumes of 1.6 million total lifts at critical Southern California ports.

Tokio Marine CEO Masahiro Koike told Nikkei Asia that the strategic partnership with Berkshire opens the door to acquisitions in international markets like Canada and Australia that “we couldn’t bring into our group alone”. As the insurance market softens, Koike expects some owners to grow less attached to underwriters that no longer throw off quite as much cash as they once did — creating a window to buy low and capture the upswing when conditions improve in the future.

In her Master Investor Podcast interview, Becky Quick also touched on last week’s much-discussed SpaceX IPO — with a Berkshire twist. “If you [had] bet against Elon Musk in the past,” she said, “you could have lost your shirt, your pants, your shoes, and everything else along the way. This is something Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have both told me individually. They might not buy the stock, but they would never bet against Elon Musk — because it is a pretty risky proposition to do so.”

Coca-Cola still reigns atop the soda game. Last year, it sold the most carbonated soft drinks in 36 of the 41 metro markets tracked by Beverage Digest.

Lubrizol CEO Rebecca Liebert spoke to Bloomberg as her company opened a new CPVC resin manufacturing facility in India — part of a broader push to double its revenue there over the next five years. The interview also doubled as a reminder of just how big a role Lubrizol’s chemistry plays in our daily lives. “You’ve probably used our products many times already today,” she said, “in the shampoo that you used to wash your hair, the lotions on your face, the medicines you took, your running shoes — and, obviously, your car.”

This was a deeply troubled time for investors. A deflating technology bubble had recently ravaged portfolios across America. Then, a cascade of corporate governance scandals shredded what remained of investor confidence. And, to top it all off, the post-9/11 specter of terrorism and war hung over everything.

Into this climate of fear stepped Lynch — calm, plain-spoken, and clear-eyed.

This is something that Warren Buffett had always understood. Moments of panic are precisely when a steady voice matters most. Not to cheerlead, but to offer perspective.

Here, Lynch does just that. Enjoy!

Peter Lynch is an authentic Hall of Fame investor. Under his management from May 1977 to May 1990, the Fidelity Magellan fund was the best-performing mutual fund in the world. Since then, he has stayed active as a writer, teacher, and philanthropist — while also serving as vice chairman of Fidelity Management & Research.

Louis Rukeyser: Many viewers want to know whether this market is totally different? Whether your old view that people should find, buy, and hold good stocks is no longer applicable? What do you think?

Peter Lynch: I think the same rules applied fifty years ago, applied five years ago, and [will] apply twenty years from now. First of all, you have to know what you own — whether it’s a fund or a stock — and you have to have a reason for it. You ought to be able to explain to an 11-year-old in two minutes or less why you own it. And “This sucker is going up!” is not a good reason. I’ve tried that one and it doesn’t work.

Speak to the question of trust. Marty [Zweig] just expressed considerable concern about it. I did at the opening. What do you think it’s going to take to repair it?

Time. This is really terrible, this week, what you mentioned about WorldCom and [Arthur] Andersen. These are real problems, but you just have to have faith. We’ve had this before. I think it’s going to take time to heal. This is very serious.

What do you think the antidote is to make sure we get rid of these abuses?

I think people will be punished for it. I think there will be surveillance and boards of directors are going to be more careful. What’s happened after we’ve had an incredible economic boom — a lot of easy money around — people push the envelope. It’s sad. You can’t legislate integrity.

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(1) The caricature of Charlie Munger made for great copy. An irascible curmudgeon. A blunt contrarian who suffered fools with barely concealed contempt. But those who knew the man best offer a far more nuanced portrait of his greatness.

Berkshire Hathaway director Christopher Davis shared some of these memories this week on the Masters in Business podcast, drawing on years of close observation. “Most deeply, I learned about integrity in the traditional sense, meaning wholeness,” he said. “Charlie was a whole person. The alignment [of] what he thought, what he said, what he did — they were all the same thing.”

The curmudgeon act, Davis suspects, was armor. Social camouflage of sorts that kept the unserious at bay, but was easily shed among friends.

“I never saw it,” he said. “He was a truth-speaker — but he was also, in a very profound way, a very loving person. Very cheerful. Very committed. Profoundly loyal.”

(2) Apple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this week — and did so with much to prove. When Apple unveiled its next-generation, AI-powered Siri assistant back in 2024, it landed with a thud. Promised features were endlessly delayed and, in retrospect, the whole thing had more than a whiff of vaporware. Making this the tech giant’s second (and probably last) chance to make a good first impression.

The new version shown off this week — dubbed Siri AI — mostly did just that. This ground-up rebuild runs on an updated Apple Intelligence architecture developed in collaboration with Google’s Gemini models. It’s designed to be more conversational, context-aware, and capable of executing multi-step tasks across apps and devices.

“This should be the dividing line between Siri as we know it and Siri as it should be,” wrote John Gruber over at Daring Fireball. “The demos I’ve seen so far are impressive. Well, impressive compared to old Siri. They’re table stakes for generative AI.”

“But Siri AI is the only system that can draw upon your personal data in the apps on your devices, and perform actions based on the app intents supported by [your] apps. It’s in some ways less capable than ChatGPT or Claude, but in other ways has more potential. It’s a very different approach and I think it’s the right one for Apple.”

Apple’s AI ambitions didn’t stop there. In the Passwords app, AI will now agentically fix any password exposed in a data breach — automatically, in the background, with no manual intervention required. Apple also hopes to take vibe coding mainstream by allowing users to ask for Safari extensions and Shortcuts to be created on their behalf.

(3) Warren Buffett once noted that share of mind trumps share of market.

Coca-Cola’s goal was never just to put fizzy drinks in people’s hands, but to plant something warmer in their chests. To that end, Coke has spent more than a century positioning itself as something more than a beverage brand. Rather, a curator of joy which shows up wherever humans are at their happiest.

The Disney Parks. The Olympics. The FIFA World Cup.

Think of these less as sponsorships and more as emotional anchors — attaching the brand to moments that people will remember for the rest of their lives. Until Coke becomes inseparable from the happy memories themselves. That’s a far harder moat to breach than any supply chain advantage.

The World Cup, which kicked off yesterday, is one of the clearest expressions of this strategy. As Ad Age puts it: “Coca-Cola wants to own the emotional experience of the World Cup. Not the games itself, but what fans feel while watching it.”

And, to get there, Coke is deploying some notably modern tools. The centerpiece is a daily AI-generated video series starring decorated soccer manager Jose Mourinho — arguing with himself. (A believable enough premise with The Special One.) 😜

“This is entertainment and storytelling built for modern football culture that is real-time, social, and engaging,” said Coca-Cola chief marketing officer Manolo Arroyo, “while bringing to life the rollercoaster of emotions fan experience during matches.”

The Jose vs. Mourinho series sits alongside a broader campaign portfolio that includes global brand films, a custom sticker collaboration with Panini, and the small matter of being the exclusive soft drink supplier at all World Cup matches.

(4) After years of planning, permitting battles, and more than 30,000 public comments, BNSF Railway’s most ambitious infrastructure project is finally moving forward. On June 2, the Barstow (California) City Council unanimously approved the Berkshire-owned railroad’s $4 billion Barstow International Gateway.

The 4,500-acre intermodal complex — which carries the satisfyingly self-aware acronym BIG — will fundamentally rewire how imported goods move from America’s busiest ports into the interior of the country.

Consider the current sad situation: When international containers arrive at the Ports of Los Angeles or Long Beach — the twin gateway through which ~40% of American imports flow — they are soon mired in a maddeningly inefficient process.

Containers are loaded onto semi-trucks, which grind through some of the most congested highway corridors in North America, before eventually reaching a rail transfer facility. Somewhere in that slow, expensive tangle, time and money bleed out.

BIG fixes this bottleneck by facilitating the direct transfer of containers from ships at port onto trains that run along the BNSF mainline to Barstow, where they will be processed and staged for eastbound travel. Construction could begin later this year.

(5) In some sense, See’s Candies was the proof of concept for everything that followed at Berkshire Hathaway. A business that so delighted its customers that it could raise prices with impunity, weather downturns, and compound quietly for decades while lesser competitors withered and died.

Perhaps more than anything else, this California-based chocolatier transformed Warren Buffett from a Grahamian bargain hunter into a buyer of enduring brands.

And the business is still humming along. “What I am very thankful for is the fact that our consumers love us,” See’s CEO Pat Egan told Becky Quick last month. “And, truly, that’s not just a line. That is reality.” He noted that the company’s numbers are up for the year — powered by its best Valentine’s Day ever — unlike most in the candy biz.

On the cost front, the picture has brightened considerably. After a jarring 5-6x surge in cocoa prices in recent years, the market “is definitely back [down] to Earth”.

Even better, See’s has already locked in favorable cocoa supply contracts through 2027.

(6) As part of Alphabet’s $85 billion equity offering, CEO Sundar Pichai explained the AI vision behind his company’s ravenous capital appetite. “AI is the most profound platform shift of our lifetimes,” he told investors. “It’s lighting up every part of our business, driving an expansionary moment in Search, turbocharging Cloud, and much more.” He added that the company faced such strong demand for its AI solutions and services that it is “meaningfully exceeding our available supply”.

“By scaling our investments,” continued Pichai, “we intend to secure the foundational infrastructure necessary for the significant growth opportunity ahead.”

Alphabet’s financials are simply staggering. Q1 2026 marked its eleventh consecutive quarter of double-digit sales growth, as revenue reached $110 billion. Operating income, meanwhile, tripled over the past five years — hitting $40 billion in the quarter.

(7) Ben Thompson of Stratechery fame sees Alphabet as uniquely positioned to not only participate in the AI economy, but to profit from almost any version of it that ultimately comes to pass. “The company is not only investing in AI,” he wrote, “but has optionality in terms of outcomes.”

“Its Services business benefits from the investment, it is in contention at the model layer with Gemini, and it can sell capacity to the frontier labs. Moreover, that capacity has a sustainable cost advantage because of TPUs, which means that in a world where compute becomes a commodity — as hard as that it is to imagine right now — Google is the hyperscaler that is poised to make the most profit.”

In other words: If AI supercharges search and advertising, Alphabet’s Services business wins. If the model layer consolidates around a handful of players, Gemini is as credible a contender as any. If compute becomes infrastructure — like electricity or bandwidth — Alphabet’s custom TPU chips give it a structural cost advantage over every rival running on merchant silicon.

In Thompson’s estimation, there is no obvious AI future in which Google loses badly. Which would be excellent news for Berkshire and its ~$30 billion investment.

(8) Berkshire-owned WPLG Local 10 in Miami inked a new deal to become the full broadcast home of the Miami Heat for the 2026/27 season. Last year, the station simulcast twelve games to impressive results. Viewership more than doubled — and sometimes tripled — the team’s normal audience figures on other platforms.

This made it an easy decision to re-up for another season — with an additional option year as well. “If we hadn’t seen the business results that we saw last year from just the twelve games,” said Heat chief marketing officer Michael McCullough, “we may have [had] a different conversation. But we saw that the increased reach leads to business results. Measurable business results.” Quite a vote of confidence for WPLG.

(9) Warren Buffett has long believed that those steering the good ship Berkshire should have sufficient “skin in the game” to align their interests with those of the conglomerate’s shareholders. So it’s worth noting that Charles Chang, who stepped into the CFO role at the start of this month, disclosed an initial ~$4.4 million stake in Berkshire. He owns six Class A shares through an LLC that he controls.

Chang, who previously served as CFO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, takes the reins from the great Marc Hamburg. For the next year, Chang and Hamburg “will work together to ensure a smooth and seamless transition period”.

(10) And, finally, a classic Warren and Charlie moment from the 1996 annual shareholders meeting. “Warren talks about these discounted cash flows,” said Charlie “[but] I’ve never seen him do one.”

“There are some things you only do in private, Charlie.” 🤣

Last weekend, Berkshire struck a deal to purchase the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company for $72.50 per share — representing a total enterprise value of $8.5 billion. This transaction is expected to close in the second half of the year.

CNBC’s Becky Quick, as usual, had the inside scoop on the deal. Greg Abel flew to Arizona and spent five hours with Taylor Morrison CEO Sheryl Palmer, laying out his vision for how the homebuilder would fit in at Berkshire Hathaway.

“When he came back,” said Quick, “he didn’t think he had a deal. But, about four days later, she called back and said that her directors were okay with it, the price was fair, [and there was] nobody else we would do a deal like this with.”

Abel then spoke with Warren Buffett and lead director Sue Decker about the proposed acquisition, “but he didn’t talk to the rest of the board until after they had completed the deal. That’s kind of the Berkshire way — to move quickly on these things.”

Taylor Morrison primarily builds single-family homes, while also offering mortgage, title, and escrow services that shepherd buyers from contract to close. It operates across twelve states, concentrated in the high-growth Sun Belt and select western metros where population and demographic tailwinds remain robust.

As America’s sixth-largest homebuilder, Taylor Morrison recorded 12,997 new home closings last year at an average sales price of $597,000. It generated $8.12 billion in total revenue — of which 95% came from home closings — and $783 million in profit.

Due to the sluggish U.S. housing market, the company currently guides for ~11,000 home closings this year at a slightly lower average sales price. Looking further ahead, though, Taylor Morrison continues to pursue its long-term target of 20,000 annual home closings by 2028 — even if that goal date might need to be pushed back a bit.

The company’s modern identity took shape in 2007, when the Taylor Woodrow and Morrison Homes brands merged into a single platform. Sheryl Palmer was named CEO shortly thereafter, stepping into the role just as the American housing market began its historic collapse. She steered Taylor Morrison through the crisis and, six years later, helped it go public through the largest homebuilder IPO in NYSE history.

Now, nearly two decades on, Palmer remains at the helm and will continue to lead the company into its next chapter as a Berkshire subsidiary.

Taylor Morrison casts a very wide net over the home-buying public. It deliberately sells across many price points, home types, geographies, and buyer profiles — creating a portfolio designed to flex not fracture when market conditions shift.

“More than anything,” said Palmer, “it protects the business from the eventual cyclicality that we know our industry always feels. The reality is not all consumers feel it at the same time — and we have certainly seen that in this environment.”

That philosophy runs through every layer of how Taylor Morrison goes to market. Its core homebuilding business is organized across three broad geographic segments, complemented by Yardly (its build-to-rent brand) and buttressed by in-house financial services. 45% of sales are spec homes, built ahead of a buyer and skewing toward entry-level customers who prioritize speed and certainty. The remaining 55% are to-be-built, where buyers who are in place from the start can select finishes and floor plans. This tends to attract more affluent, patient buyers willing to pay up for personalization.

Taylor Morrison’s customer breakdown tells the same story: 30% entry-level, 18% first move-up, 29% second move-up, and 23% resort lifestyle. (This data is from 2024 and can fluctuate slightly from year to year, but hopefully provides a useful idea of TM’s operations.)

The result is a homebuilder engineered for durability. One that shouldn’t rise and fall with a single type of buyer, a single zip code, or a single rumble in the rate cycle.

The U.S. housing market remains in something of an awkward holding pattern. Elevated mortgage rates have created a two-sided freeze: prospective buyers find monthly payments increasingly out of reach, while existing homeowners — many contentedly locked into mortgages at 3% or lower — have little rational incentive to trade up at today’s rates. It all adds up to muted transaction volume.

For example, Taylor Morrison saw its Q1 home closings revenue fall from $1.8 billion to $1.3 billion year over year, driven mostly by fewer closings.

The structural case for housing, though, hasn’t really changed — and Berkshire seems to have nabbed Taylor Morrison at a good price during a cyclical trough. “That is an incredible bargain,” Tony Avila of Builder Advisor Group told the Wall Street Journal.

Greg Abel, for his part, kept it simple. “This investment is grounded in a long-term belief in the strength of America’s housing market and its underlying fundamentals, which we see as enduring over time.”

Berkshire is no stranger to the housing/building industry. The conglomerate already owns Clayton Homes — the manufactured housing giant acquired in 2003 — along with a constellation of building products businesses like Acme Brick, Johns Manville insulation, Benjamin Moore paint, and Shaw carpet and flooring.

It has also been an active investor in publicly traded homebuilders, moving in and out of D.R. Horton and currently holding stakes in NVR and Lennar. I wonder if Berkshire will exit these positions now, like it did with other railroads after snapping up BNSF.

Greg Abel has big plans for Taylor Morrison. “Over time,” he said in the press release, “we expect to unify our site-built homebuilding operations into a combined platform enabling us to deliver the dream of homeownership to more Americans.”

But this is (probably) not a case of simply joining Taylor Morrison and Clayton Homes together. Notice that Abel said “site-built” in the above quote. The vast majority of Clayton’s business comes from manufactured, factory-built housing. I would guess that Abel is referring to Clayton Properties Group here, the site-built division within the larger Clayton, as to what will eventually be unified with Taylor Morrison.

No matter how it shakes out, this acquisition turns Berkshire into a major player in the homebuilding game. Combining Taylor Morrison’s 12,997 closings last year with Clayton Properties Group’s 9,953 would give Berkshire 22,950 annual home closings. Enough to rank as the fourth-largest homebuilder in the United States, trailing only D.R. Horton, Lennar, and PulteGroup.

And joining Berkshire allows Taylor Morrison to hop off the Wall Street treadmill. The weight of analyst expectations and public guidance would take a toll on anyone. “If you were to really be honest about it,” Palmer told Fortune, “sometimes I feel [like] I live my life in six week increments. Earnings, call a board meeting, earnings, call a board meeting. It’s a treadmill you’re on twenty hours a day.”

This relentless quarterly cadence compresses long-cycle businesses into short-cycle reporting — a structural mismatch that can distort decision-making for even the most disciplined operators.

Happily, becoming part of Berkshire changes all that. “I think one of the things we’re so excited about is homebuilding runs in five-, seven-, ten-year cycles,” she said last week. “Berkshire thinks in seven-, ten-year, or longer cycles. That alignment is rare.”

One of Taylor Morrison’s key growth areas is what it calls “resort living” — which includes its popular Esplanade sub-brand. Basically, active adult communities in immersive, amenity-rich environments for buyers 55 and older. And, perhaps not so coincidentally, those who have plenty of money to spend on their retirement.

Esplanade launched in Florida about fourteen years ago and has since expanded into North Carolina, California, and (most recently) Nevada. This last one, near Las Vegas, is expected to command record lot and option premiums.

“The unique value proposition [of Esplanade communities] drives superior home prices and gross margins that consistently exceed the balance of our business,” said Palmer. These buyers know exactly what they want — and are willing to pay for it.

Taylor Morrison plans more than twenty new Esplanade community openings this year alone. “With a strong pipeline of Esplanade communities coming soon and opportunities for brand expansion in many of our markets,” said Palmer on a recent earnings call, “we expect this segment’s contribution to our bottom line to grow meaningfully in the years ahead.”

Culture matters. “It’s not a soft, squishy word,” said Palmer, “and it should never come across like we’re soft and we’re so nice [that] we can’t make hard decisions. That’s not it. We are nice, we are kind, and we treat people with respect — but that doesn’t mean we don’t make good, difficult business decisions and have hard discussions. It just means there is a right way and a wrong way to treat people.”

Much like Warren Buffett’s admonition to Salomon employees once upon a time, Palmer advises her staff to always do the right thing. “If it causes us to miss our numbers,” she said, “we’ll [live] with that.”

As a result, the figurative Taylor Morrison trophy case is getting pretty crowded. As of January, the company earned the title of America’s Most Trusted Home Builder from Lifestory Research for a record eleventh consecutive year. Forbes has named it to both the Most Trusted and Best Companies lists — and Fortune followed suit this year with a spot for Taylor Morrison on its World’s Most Admired Companies list.

• “Everyone talks about my financial success,” said Buffett. “But the thing I’m most proud of? The culture I’ve created at Berkshire. That culture has created all of my wealth. It’s the single biggest reason for Berkshire’s success. When I go to acquire a business, all I have to do is talk to the owner. They know how we operate. They know our values. We shake hands. The deal is done. No attorneys. No investment bankers fighting over terms. Just trust. Our culture is everything.”

• When Letts mentioned he planned to go into wealth management, Buffett said: “Never, ever have clients. You may call them that, but in your mind, they must be partners. Set it up so if they win, you win — in that order. If you do that, you’ll be successful forever.”

(2) Greg Abel has been busy. Over the weekend, Berkshire Hathaway announced the acquisition of Taylor Morrison — one of America’s leading homebuilders — in an all-cash deal worth $8.5 billion. Berkshire will pay $72.50 per share, representing a 24% premium to the stock’s previous closing price, for a total of $6.8 billion in equity value (plus the assumption of existing debt).

“Berkshire is acquiring a best-in-class national homebuilder,” said Abel, “led by an exceptional team and backed by a trusted reputation for customer experience.”

Taylor Morrison operates across twelve states and generates 95% of its annual revenue from home closings. It landed on Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list this year and has reigned as America’s Most Trusted Builder for more than a decade. And, true to Berkshire form, the existing management team — led by CEO Sheryl Palmer — will stay in place after the transaction closes.

“Greg did [this deal] faster than I could have done it, smoother than I could have done it, and I never [even] talked to the CEO,” Warren Buffett told Becky Quick afterwards. “He has launched.”

Looking further ahead, Abel outlined an ambitious vision: “Over time, we expect to unify our site-built homebuilding operations into a combined platform enabling us to deliver the dream of homeownership to more Americans.”

(3) Taylor Morrison CEO Sheryl Palmer could not hide her excitement at the prospect of joining the Berkshire family. “[This] is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the company, for the brand, and our team members across the country,” she said.

“It allows us to focus on the long game,” added Palmer. “If you think about the cycles of our industry, acquiring land at the right time and the right price, investing through cycle downturns maybe when others pull back, building communities that take years and years to develop — this is exactly the patient capital advantage that Berkshire provides to the companies they own.”

In other words, Taylor Morrison does not just gain a deep-pocketed parent — but the freedom to build its business without the quarterly pressure of a public company.

(4) While the Taylor Morrison ink was still drying, Abel turned his attention to Alphabet. Berkshire deepened its investment in the tech giant with a $10 billion private stock purchase — split evenly between Alphabet’s Class A shares (bought at $351.81 a piece) and Class C shares ($348.20). This move is part of a broader $85 billion stock offering from The Company Formerly Known As Google, to fund what it calls “world-class AI compute infrastructure” for surging customer demand.

(There has been some confusion about the Class C “capital” stock that Berkshire purchased. That’s just Alphabet’s official designation for its non-voting shares, not a special kind of preferred issue or anything of that sort.)

The deal came together quickly. Goldman Sachs called Abel over the weekend to bring Berkshire into the picture — and it was sealed the next day when Abel spoke directly to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. He received a six-plus percent discount on these shares at the time of announcement, though that has partially dissipated amid fluctuations in Alphabet’s stock price this week.

(5) Why does Alphabet need the money? Well, for starters, its current-year capital expenditure forecast recently rose to $180-190 billion as it aggressively builds data centers and locks in the compute capacity needed to train and run next-generation Gemini AI models. And Google has already signaled that cap-ex will “significantly increase” again next year.

Berkshire opened its Alphabet position less than a year ago, but has quickly turned it into a cornerstone of the massive equity portfolio. When combining the and shares owned by the conglomerate, Alphabet is already nipping at Coca-Cola’s heels for a top-three spot.

(6) When Ajit Jain eventually steps back from leading Berkshire’s insurance empire, General Re chairman Charlie Shamieh will reportedly take his place. Shamieh is not a household name — not even in Berkshire circles — and seems to prefer it that way. He keeps a very low profile, though his recent interview for the anniversary edition of The Warren Buffett CEO is a notable (and welcome) exception.

I did manage to dig up a couple other Shamieh talks of recent vintage. In 2021, as Gen Re celebrated its centennial, he reflected on the company’s history and underwriting philosophy. And what emerged was a portrait of someone who thinks about insurance the same way Warren Buffett does investing — in decades, not quarters.

“The key thing that is still here and hasn’t really been tainted by any of the various ebbs and flows of our history is the underwriting integrity and the willingness to do what’s in the long-term best interests of the client,” said Shamieh. “Those words — long term — often are missing from many other reinsurers in the industry today.”

That attitude starts at the very top. “The unique thing,” he said, “is our shareholder (Berkshire Hathaway) does not measure our value using traditional insurance and reinsurance industry metrics of return on equity. Rather, it’s looking at the solidity of our long-term underwriting profits — and that’s really unique.”

This affords Gen Re — and Berkshire’s other insurers — the freedom to say no.

No to mispriced risk. No to volume written at the expense of quality. No to the aggressive business that peers chase when the market softens.

That kind of institutional patience is rare in the insurance industry. In Shamieh, it sounds like Berkshire has found someone who recognizes this mindset as a precious differentiator — and intends to protect and nurture it for years to come.

(7) In another interview, Shamieh made the case for an insurance industry that doesn’t just price risk and write checks — but actively works to reduce said risk in the first place. He pointed to the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a U.S.-based nonprofit funded collectively by global reinsurers and domestic insurers as a prime example. “We’re not just talking about sustainability,” Shamieh told Insurance Europe, “but we’re actually investing in sustainability.”

“The team of engineers and scientists at the IBHS does an excellent job of trying to educate us on the resilience of building materials and then putting pressure back on the manufacturers to improve the resilience of those materials and on building codes in local communities to ensure that those societies are more sustainable.”

The IBHS operates large-scale physical testing facilities where materials and structures are subjected to simulated hurricanes, hailstorms, wildfires, and other catastrophic perils — to better understand how and why they fail. More resilient buildings mean smaller losses, less frequent claims, and a more stable underwriting environment for everyone. A win for insurers and policyholders alike.

(8) According to the IDC market intelligence firm, Apple shipped 1.1 million MacBook Neo units last quarter. A remarkable figure in its own right, but made all the more impressive by the fact that it was only on sale for around three weeks of that period. IDC also noted that shipments spiked sharply in early April, suggesting the next earnings report could deliver an even bigger headline number for the Neo.

In response to this “off the charts” demand (as CEO Tim Cook put it) for the MacBook Neo, Apple has reportedly doubled its planned shipments — to 10 million — for the full year.

What makes this product so significant is not just these sales figures — though I’m sure they are much appreciated in Cupertino — but what it represents strategically. By pairing the premium look and feel of its flagship MacBook lineup with the price savings of “binned” iPhone chips, Apple has engineered a laptop it can sell for as low as $499. For the first time, a whole swath of customers who were previously priced out of the MacBook ecosystem have an attractive on-ramp — and they are taking it.

(9) A confluence of forces is pushing freight off the highway and onto the rails. Higher fuel prices continue to squeeze trucking economics, while tightening federal enforcement of truck driver registrations constrain over-the-road capacity. “Shippers are changing modes when they can,” a TD Cowen transport analyst told Trains, with intermodal rail emerging as the early winner. “Volume is going to increase through the second quarter,” the analyst predicted.

And, happily, BNSF Railway is leading the charge. The Berkshire-owned railroad posted 9.9% intermodal traffic growth over the past four weeks, outpacing the rest of the industry, and raising the possibility that U.S. roads could challenge the all-time record of 14.47 million intermodal shipments set back in 2018.

BNSF vice president Jon Gabriel sees this influx of diverted freight as a chance for his railroad — and the entire industry — to make real inroads against trucking rivals. “The biggest prize of all is conversion from truckload,” he said. “We want to be that base load capacity, not the flex capacity, for supply chains across the country.”

(10) The New York Times Dealbook newsletter reports that Sirius XM and iHeartMedia were unable to reach an agreement on a potential merger. The deal would have combined two of the most recognizable names in audio entertainment at a moment when both face mounting pressure from streaming platforms. Dealbook adds that discussions, while currently stalled, could be revived in the future.

Buffett had already told the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week that the Delta buy was not his — though he has passed on investment ideas to new CEO Greg Abel since his retirement. Whether those have been acted on, though, was left unsaid.

In the same article, Delta CEO Ed Bastian admitted that he long hoped Berkshire would invest in his airline again one day. “That was always one of my checklist things,” he said, “to kind of get to the other side of [the pandemic] and see if there was a way that they would return.” Mission accomplished.

(2) The New York Times sat down with Bastian for a profile of its own — which also doubles as a useful introduction to one of Berkshire’s newest investments. Delta remains the most profitable domestic airline, in large part thanks to its intense focus on premium customers willing to pay more for better service.

“Our best customers,” said Bastian, “don’t even look at the price.” (If Delta — or any other Berkshire company — would like to sponsor this newsletter, I, too, promise not to look at the price before booking my next flight.) 😜

Bastian’s biggest fear, he told employees at a recent meeting, is complacency. “There’s only one thing that can stop us: We start to believe that we’re better [than everyone else].”

(3) Gen Re chairman Charlie Shamieh — widely reported to be Ajit Jain’s successor atop Berkshire’s insurance empire — keeps a pretty low profile. But, happily, he granted author Robert Miles a very rare interview for the 25th anniversary edition of The Warren Buffett CEO. “I’ve tried to learn as much as I can from Ajit,” said Shamieh. “I just hope I can do a fraction of what he has been able to do for Berkshire.”

More on Shamieh coming early next week.

(4) Markel CEO Tom Gayner, speaking at the Gabelli Omaha Value Investor Conference earlier this month, compared Berkshire’s balance sheet to the Rock of Gibraltar. When asked how capital allocation might evolve under this new regime, he marveled at the unparalleled optionality Berkshire’s cash affords it.

“I would expect that share repurchases will become a much more meaningful thing at Berkshire than has been the case in the past,” said Gayner. “I think the idea of a dividend is within the realm of possibility. I would not think of [initiating a dividend] as a negative signal in the sense that some people might.”

“Given that this world has surprises along the way that none of us can foresee, the opportunity for them to episodically and periodically apply big chunks of cash is real. That’s a substantial advantage for Berkshire.”

“At the same time, they have the ‘and’ capability. It’s not an either/or trade-off for them. They can chew into the share count by a meaningful percentage each and every year — and still maintain all of the financial flexibility that they have and will continue to have, given the levels of cash generation that the business does.”

(5) Gayner also weighed in on BNSF Railway — and made nearly the exact same AI-related points as Abel did the next day at Berkshire’s Q&A session. “Burlington Northern is thought to perhaps not be on the cutting edge of some of the things that are going on right now,” he told the Gabelli audience. “AI will be very helpful in allowing them to make those changes — in the same way that GEICO made some spectacular improvements in its efficiency under Todd Combs’s leadership.”

“But it won’t change the fundamental position of Burlington Northern in the landscape of industry,” continued Gayner. “The laws of gravity, physics, and weight still mean you’ve got to carry something that’s heavy from one place to another place. That’s not something that can be done by AI. The new acronym that’s being bandied about is HALO — Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence. The railroad would be an example of things where AI is going to be useful as a tool and create efficiency, but it won’t change the fundamental nature of the business.”

(6) Students from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business traveled to Omaha for the Berkshire annual meeting. And, even though Buffett was not on stage this year, this trip was less about seeing the Oracle and more about understanding the legacy he built over decades of patient stewardship.

“[Buffett] resonates because he offers a stable framework in a market that often rewards noise,” said MBA student Nathan Ingram. “Buffett makes the process feel simple — buy good businesses at sensible prices, think long-term — but he also emphasizes that ‘simple’ isn’t the same as ‘easy’. For students surrounded by hype, that combination is grounding: a decision process they can defend, an approach for thinking about risk, and a reminder that the real edge is temperament — patience, humility, and consistency — more than speed.”

(7) Squishmallows, already the largest plush toy franchise in the world, are branching out. Last year, Berkshire-owned Jazwares partnered with Blue Meadow Brands to create Squishmallows Fragrances — and these scents have been a big hit right out of the gate. According to Beauty Independent, a Squishmallows Fragrance product sells every seven seconds at Ulta Beauty.

Joel Ronkin, who oversees this fragrance line as CEO of Blue Meadow Brands, admits that its early success caught everyone off-guard. “Our business was so strong during the holidays [last year] that we really struggled keeping up with inventory,” he said, “so we’ll be more prepared for demand this time around.”

(8) Speaking of Jazwares, new CEO David Neustein sounded positively Buffett-esque when discussing tariffs and other geopolitical uncertainties at the Berkshire AGM. “As Warren would say, we believe in America,” he told Becky Quick. “Going into the 250th anniversary of this amazing country, there are always going to be some ups and downs and challenges. But what we need to do is be able to roll with that and, ultimately, to deliver product to our consumers and our fans around the world.”

(9) According to Reuters sources, Occidental Petroleum secured a 10% stake in Exxon Mobil’s deepwater exploration block off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago. The acreage borders the legendary Stabroek Block, one of the most consequential offshore oil discoveries in recent history. The two areas reportedly share striking geological similarities, fueling hopes that UD(1) will also hold significant untapped resources. Exxon is currently running seismic surveys across the block and gathering data to determine whether or not to drill an exploration well.

(10) And, finally, a quick word of wisdom from Warren Buffett to send us into the weekend. Here, he perfectly captures the business-oriented mindset and detachment from market fluctuations needed to be an intelligent investor.

As Buffett’s authorized biographer and author of The Snowball, she once had unparalleled access to the man himself. Years of honest conversation, unguarded moments, and a front-row seat to one of the most remarkable minds of any time.

A note of context before we begin: Since this conversation took place in the immediate aftermath of Buffett’s announcement, Schroeder (or anyone else) did not yet know all the details of how Berkshire Hathaway would be run in his absence. Some of her commentary may sound out-of-date now, but captures the uncertainty of those first unsettled days. Enjoy!

Host: Warren Buffett made this announcement at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Just give us a sense of that meeting — because these gatherings have become a kind of mecca for Buffett shareholders.

Alice Schroeder: Over the years, the number of people attending has grown and grown to exceed 40,000 people, which fills the largest convention center in Nebraska. There is shopping and there are entertainments and parties — and it lasts an entire weekend in addition to the meeting proper, which is about six hours long. It’s unlike any other shareholder meeting really, I think, in the world.

Did you have any sense that this was the year that Warren Buffett was going to make that announcement?

No. It clearly was coming at some point. He’s 94 [now] and he will retire at 95. I have heard people say that they had a sense. I went for many, many years to the meeting and every year people would predict that this would be the year. So, with hindsight, whoever predicted it this year looks very smart. (Laughs)

He clearly was a man who loved his work. Your biography of him was called The Snowball because he said he wanted to be like a snowball — constantly in motion, gathering wealth and friends. That doesn’t sound like the kind of person who’s going to cope well with retirement.

That is an excellent point. It is really important that he has kept the role of chairman and advisor to the company at a time when I think the board of directors will have to step up and play a bigger role. He needs that stimulation because he would be bored and it would not be good for his health, so I think it’s a good situation.1

Remind us how you came to know Warren Buffett and came to write that book.

I was working on Wall Street. I was an insurance analyst and I decided that I would cover the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, meaning analyze it.2

I actually got a phone call from him out of the blue because I was the only person who had chosen to do that — and he offered me the opportunity to go out to Omaha, interview him, see the businesses, etc. For five years, I covered the stock of Berkshire Hathaway and I was the only person who did.

At the end of that, he started pushing me to write a book, saying he didn’t want to write the book about himself.3 So we worked out that he would cooperate with me, which is important because he did not actually want the kind of control that you have in an authorized biography or an “as told to” kind of book. It’s my perspective on him. He did not edit it. He did not ask for any changes. And he wasn’t entirely happy with it, which I feel good about because that means it was fair.

There was some reporting that your relationship with Warren Buffett cooled after the publication of the biography. Is that fair?

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So, if you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, there is no time like the present.

(1) Berkshire Hathaway’s Q1 2026 investment report totally lived up to the hype. As the Wall Street Journal telegraphed last month, new CEO Greg Abel did indeed sell off most or all of Todd Combs’s portfolio following his departure to JPMorgan Chase. In Game of Thrones parlance, this was “The Red 13-F” with securities cut down right and left. Gone are Visa, Mastercard, Domino’s Pizza, UnitedHealth, Pool Corp., Amazon, Aon, HEICO, Lamar Advertising, Charter Communications, Allegion, Diageo, Liberty Formula One, Liberty Latin America Series A & C, and Atlanta Braves Holdings.

Some of this was predictable — especially the financial names — but the scope of this purge surprised me. (I figured Domino’s was a Ted Weschler pick.) And the exodus may not be over. Constellation Brands could be next to go after Berkshire slashed it by 95% in the first quarter. That rarely bodes well for a stock’s longevity.

Other sales of note include a modest trim of Bank of America and a bigger whack at Chevron. Despite being two of Berkshire’s largest positions, neither was named by Abel in his shareholder letter as a part of the permanent-ish Core Four — so these reductions are not wholly unexpected. Nucor also got chopped by nearly 40%.

(2) On the buy side, Berkshire made a big statement by more than tripling its stake in Alphabet. This ~40 million share splurge catapulted the Conglomerate Formerly Known As Google up to the fifth-largest holding in the portfolio. If this is Greg Abel’s opening move as architect of Berkshire’s investment strategy, he’s announcing himself with conviction rather than caution. All told, between the Class A and Class C shares, Berkshire’s total Alphabet position is now valued at over $23 billion. Serious stuff.

Alphabet remains a constellation of dominant brands and services. Google Search — still the most valuable piece of internet real estate ever built — YouTube, Android, Google Cloud, Gmail, Waymo, and on and on and on. Not to mention its 6.11% stake in SpaceX, which is set to go public next month.

A year ago, Alphabet was being written off as a casualty of the ChatGPT moment — a legacy giant caught flat-footed by AI advancement. But it managed to upend that narrative with the roll-out of Gemini and the durability of its core Search franchise. To wit, Alphabet grew revenue by 22% to $110 billion in the first quarter.

(3) On March 31 — the final day of the quarter — Warren Buffett told CNBC that he recently had made “one tiny purchase” for Berkshire’s portfolio. As someone of much more limited means than Mr. Buffett, I don’t know exactly what “tiny” means to a man of his wealth. Alphabet ($23 billion) almost certainly doesn’t qualify, leaving a few different possibilities. One of which is Delta Airlines.

Yes, Berkshire has once again returned to the skies — an industry it has a complicated, checkered history with. (See USAir in 1989 and Buffett’s airline exit during the pandemic.) He once jokingly described himself as an air-o-holic, who needed to be gently talked down before making big bets on the airline industry.

Might Buffett have saddled up for one last spin in the clouds before the end?

(Update: Nope. One of the risks of having a million Google News Alerts set up for Berkshire and its many subsidiaries and investments is that occasionally an important item gets lost in the shuffle. Buffett told the Wall Street Journal earlier this week that he didn’t buy Delta.)

Delta’s premium segmentation strategy maximizes revenue from high-value business travelers — while still offering a full range of fare classes for the cost-conscious. And, as a commenter kindly pointed out, Delta is also the only major domestic airline with its own oil refinery, which processes crude oil directly into jet fuel.

(4) Another candidate could be Berkshire’s new $60 million Macy’s position — though this might be too small for Buffett. How tiny is too tiny? Ted Weschler once made beaucoup bucks on Dillard’s in his personal portfolio, so I would lean towards him on this one. Department stores face an undeniably murky future (and that’s being kind), but Berkshire apparently sees something in the rubble worth owning. Perhaps playing the long game on Macy’s valuable real estate.

The company’s Bold New Chapter strategy involves closing sprawling legacy stores that made more sense in 1986 than 2026 — and pivoting toward smaller-format setups and premium brands like Bloomingdale’s. Macy’s e-commerce also seems farther along than other old-school department store survivors, with $7.6 billion in digital sales last year representing 35% of total revenue.

And, if nothing else, Macy’s sells only the finest chocolates and candies.

Berkshire also topped up its stakes in Lennar and the New York Times during the first quarter. I personally took Buffett’s “tiny” comment as referring to a new investment, but that might just be me. Either of these two could just as easily fit the bill.

(5) I’ve always appreciated how Buffett talked up his Coca-Cola investment by counting how many drinks are consumed worldwide each day — and what slice of that consumption belongs to Berkshire. A small rhetorical habit that reinforced these were not just ticker symbols to mindlessly trade, but actual businesses that Berkshire owned pieces of — one transaction at a time.

Few investors think that way. Fewer still talk that way.

Circling back to Alphabet, its Android mobile operating system powers somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the world’s smartphones. And Apple’s iOS accounts for another ~25%. Which means Berkshire, through its stock portfolio, has a finger in billions of indispensable devices that people check hundreds of times a day.

(6) BNSF Railway will be America-maxxing this summer with three new locomotives all decked out for the country’s 250th birthday. Some of the patriotic details include special engine numbers (250, 1776, 2026); “We the People” emblazoned on the side; and a circle of stars evoking the Betsy Ross flag. “Few institutions are woven into the fabric of America quite like the railroad,” said CEO Katie Farmer. “For nearly two centuries, railroaders have [shaped] the American story, connecting communities, powering economic growth, and strengthening the nation we call home.”

She’s not wrong. BNSF’s own lineage runs through roads like the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe — one of the great arteries of westward expansion. Railroads stitched the continent together, decades before the interstate highway system, generations before commercial aviation, a century before the internet. The country that exists today was built, in no small part, on top of the rail network.

(7) The Financial Times profiled hedge fund manager Chris Hohn this week, calling him “perhaps the closest thing Britain has to Warren Buffett”. The two men speak regularly and Hohn embraces the concentrated, disciplined investment style of his nonagenarian friend. They share more than mutual administration, though, as both hold significant stakes in Moody’s, the credit ratings giant. “Buffett told me,” said Hohn, “[that] if the financial crisis didn’t kill [Moody’s], nothing will.”

What makes Hohn so formidable isn’t just what he buys — it’s how he thinks. “Chris has an incredible ability to think in black and white,” said former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, who used to work with Hohn. “He focuses on one, maybe two things that drive the investment thesis and then has the confidence to scale up the bet so it’s a big part of the fund.” Hohn fishes in a deliberately small pond — an investable universe of just over 200 companies — and holds his positions for nine years on average.

(8) Coca-Cola recently hosted the FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour in Atlanta — and local outlet Saporta Report caught up with new CEO Henrique Braun. He may be new to the title, but Braun and Coke go way back. As a young man, he played soccer with friends on the beach in Brazil — with a liter of Coke awarded to the winners.

And while fizzy beverages remain the core of the company, Braun noted that 75% of Coca-Cola’s 32 billion-dollar brands are of the non-sparkling variety. “Fifty percent were brands we acquired,” he added. “Sometimes people forget that. Three of them we bought were already higher than the $1 billion mark. But, everything else, we bought below a billion.” In other words, Coke is not limited to purchasing finished products, but still retains the ability to nurture and scale growing brands.

(9) On a recent earnings call, Tokio Marine managing executive officer Brad Irick offered a bullish assessment of the company’s strategic partnership with Berkshire Hathaway. He framed the arrangement as a force multiplier for two of the strongest businesses in the world. “I don’t think it’s a question of needing Berkshire Hathaway,” he said. “I think it is a question of whether it enhances the capabilities that we have. And it absolutely does. It enhances the flexibility [and] brings potential deals into the realm of possibility for us that might not have been there before.”

“It may [also] be the flexibility to do more than one deal,” continued Irick. “I think we had quite a capability of delivering on M&A previously [and this] is enhancing that capability. And what better partner could we possibly have to really focus on that?”

(10) Johns Manville CEO Bob Wamboldt will retire on August 1 after nearly six years at the helm, passing the reins to engineered products president John Vasuta. “It’s an extraordinary privilege to step into the role of CEO,” said Vasuta. “I’m deeply honored to continue serving our customers and supporting the employees whose dedication makes our success possible.” Wamboldt predicted that his successor will “guide the company to even greater success”.

And, in another notable shake-up, BNSF Railway COO Matt Garland stepped down after just five months on the job. In comes Craig Morehouse, who most recently served as senior vice president of network, operations, and service design. “Craig’s proven leadership, experience, and firsthand knowledge of our network [will] position BNSF to achieve operational excellence,” said CEO Katie Farmer.

Just a few years earlier, the headcount barely cracked a dozen. Everyone who showed up fit comfortably inside National Indemnity’s employee cafeteria. A modest gathering of true Berkshire believers who were likely all on a first name basis.

But, as the decade drew to a close, that era had well and truly ended.

On April 24, 1989, roughly a thousand Berkshire shareholders descended on the Witherspoon Concert Hall at Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum. Cars jammed the parking lot. People pressed into the lobby. And the overflow crowded into the balcony.

All of them there to hear Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

Buffett surveyed the improbable scene. “A lot more people turn out to talk about their money than to look at old paintings,” he marveled.

For more than two hours, Berkshire’s dynamic duo held court — fielding twenty-two questions by the Omaha World-Herald’s count — and then lingered at the foot of the stage for another forty-five minutes afterwards, kibitzing with shareholders not yet ready to call it a day.

What follows is my best attempt at reconstructing this meeting — assembled from contemporary newspaper accounts and the occasional illuminating detail drawn from the excellent University of Berkshire Hathaway.

Alas, our canvas is sadly incomplete. Many questions and answers lost to time, swallowed by the passing years before anyone thought to preserve them in full.

But even a partial portrait of Buffett and Munger in their prime is worth framing.

“If I Died Tonight…”

It wouldn’t be a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting without someone raising the question of succession — and 1989 was no exception.

Buffett didn’t even flinch.

“If I died tonight,” he said, the answer was simple: “Charlie would take over and the stock would go up.” In the event that both of them kicked off, they had someone — an unnamed “third person” — in mind to step in and steward shareholders’ capital with the same values, discipline, and long-term approach that had long defined Berkshire.

But, as always, they politely declined to say who that successor might be.

In the post-meeting scrum at the foot of the stage, shareholders pressed for a name.

“It’s a mystery,” said Charlie.

And all Buffett would add is that “the name is not ‘third person’.”

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(1) Later this afternoon, Berkshire Hathaway will reveal its Q1 2026 investment activity via a new 13-F filing. Here’s what we already know: Berkshire sold $8.1 billion of common stock (net) in the first quarter, extending its streak as a net seller to fourteen consecutive quarters. But that framing only tells part of the story.

Berkshire’s continued net seller status somewhat obscures the fact that it laid out $15.9 billion during the quarter on new purchases. That represents a pretty significant amount of capital freshly deployed into the portfolio. A real statement of conviction after many quarters of relatively modest activity. And, in the space of three months, just slightly less than Berkshire spent on stock throughout all of last year.

(2) Nebraska Furniture Mart brought executives from Manwah — one of its key furniture suppliers — to Omaha for the Berkshire annual meeting. And the experience made a clear impression on company president (and first-time attendee) Gabriele Natale. “Warren Buffett has built something virtually unprecedented: a trust-based conglomerate,” he told Furniture Today.

“His philosophy — investing in people and businesses with ‘moats’ and long-term viability — is clearly the DNA of the organization. He didn’t just build a portfolio. He built a standard for corporate integrity and simplicity.”

Natale’s read on new CEO Greg Abel echoed that of many Berkshire observers. “While Buffett is narrative-driven,” he said, “Abel is proving to be more operationally focused and detail-oriented. The message was ‘New Boss, Same Playbook’ — and Abel reiterated his total commitment to the culture Buffett and Munger established.”

He also singled out NFM’s Irv Blumkin as a living embodiment of the Berkshire model. “Irv highlights a core Berkshire takeaway,” said Natale. “The person matters as much as the P&L. In a shifting economy, aligning with partners who share a long-term philosophy is the best hedge against volatility.”

(3) In what could be very good news for the railroad industry, Amazon officially launched Amazon Supply Chain Services last week — opening its vast logistics network to outside businesses for the first time. The platform includes freight, distribution, fulfillment, and parcel shipping capabilities that Amazon spent years — and billions of dollars — building for its own retail operations.

Analysts see BNSF Railway as the most immediate railroad beneficiary — with ASCS expected to drive a meaningful uptick in intermodal volume. Which just so happens to be BNSF’s bread and butter. “Amazon needs rail capacity,” logistics expert Paul Tonsager told Trains. “ASCS doesn’t change that. They already move more than 24,000 intermodal containers using Class I line-hauls and [this] announcement formalizes a dependency [on railroads] rather than threatening it.”

(4) Former BNSF CEO Matt Rose delivered a pointed warning to the railroad industry at this week’s “Rails to the Future” conference. In short, those roads that worship at the altar of operating ratio might be trading their future for better quarterly numbers. “We have allowed short-term investment thinking to creep into this industry like I have never seen it,” he said. Too many people treat operating ratio as the end-all, be-all of railroad performance.

“It’s not,” Rose said flatly. “Returns should be our guiding light.”

The current fashion of pushing annual rate increases above inflation successfully padded revenue and profits — but at a cost. It steadily drove off shippers toward trucking, hollowing out the volume growth that sustains a healthy railroad over time. “Industries and companies that don’t grow die,” said Rose. “And that’s what the [railroad] industry is doing.”

Rose was equally blunt about the proposed Union Pacific x Norfolk Southern merger. “I don’t think any customer that’s been through [a Class I] merger, the captive carload customer, would ever say that they were better off [afterwards].”

Union Pacific recently filed a revised merger application with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board after its first attempt was deemed incomplete — but Rose was not moved. “I don’t think that there’s anything in this application that tells me that carload competition is going to be enhanced,” he said. “I think it’s just the opposite.”

(5) You’ve probably seen a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine — the touchscreen tower at fast-food restaurants offering an almost absurd number of drink combinations. But, if you’re anything like me, you never thought about what they can do for Coke beyond dispensing fizzy beverages. Since their 2009 launch, Freestyle machines have poured 66 billion drinks — and every single one feeds data back to Coke’s nerve center.

Each purchase becomes a data point — what flavor, what time, what location, what combination — aggregated across millions of daily interactions into what amounts to a mother lode of customer information. “It’s actually the biggest live consumer taste test that’s going on anywhere on the globe,” Coca-Cola vice president Gigy Philip told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “There is no other company that has this.”

(6) Apple has reportedly reached a preliminary chip-making agreement with Intel. The details remain very thin — neither company has yet confirmed the deal and the Wall Street Journal didn’t specify which chips Intel will manufacture for which Apple devices. The U.S. government, which holds a 10% stake in Intel, apparently played an active role in brokering this relationship.

Apple designs its own chips, but relies heavily on TSMC to manufacture them — a concentration that occasionally creates supply constraints and leaves the company exposed to any eventual geopolitical disruptions in Taiwan. Adding a domestic fab, even as a partial alternative, reduces that vulnerability. For Intel, landing Apple as a foundry customer would be the credibility milestone it has long needed.

The deal, if confirmed, sits at the intersection of three converging interests: Apple wants supply chain resilience, Washington wants domestic chip production, and Intel simply needs the business.

(7) A year ago, investor and writer Vitaliy Katsenelson left the Berkshire annual meeting with an uneasy feeling — unsure about Greg Abel replacing Buffett — but this year he became a convert. Writing in Fortune, Katsenelson describes what changed his mind: Abel’s tour de force of operational knowledge and vision for improving a stable of subsidiaries that are not entirely living up to their potential.

“Choosing Greg was one of the most important decisions Buffett made in decades,” wrote Katsenelson. “At his first annual meeting, we could see why. A corporate Mr. Fix-It is walking through every business, identifying key performance indicators, installing the right incentives, bringing technology to them, and replacing managers who need replacing.”

(8) Dairy Queen’s total sales climbed about 3% last year to nearly $6.6 billion — buoyed by 10% same-store growth in China. CNBC’s Becky Quick asked CEO Troy Bader about how the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs might affect the business going forward. “It’s hard for us to say right now,” he replied, “but definitely there is a trend right now that we need to be mindful of.” DQ will emphasize its a la carte menu and mix-and-match options for those customers looking to cut back on calories.

Bader also touched on DQ’s much-discussed decision to use an AI chatbot to take drive-thru orders. While he hopes the technology will eventually reach 99% accuracy, Bader is most excited for the human implications of handing rote work over to the machines. “If you didn’t have AI,” he said, “for the individual at the window, taking orders would be 100% of what they’re doing. [Now], I can be monitoring the quality of the product or providing hospitality to a guest in a different way. It’s about elevating the customer experience.”

(9) Fortune profiled American Express CEO Stephen Squeri and his impressive run atop the company. Since taking the helm in early 2018, AmEx has delivered 16.6% annualized total returns — outpacing competitors like JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, Visa, and even the S&P 500 along the way.

Much of that success traces back to Squeri’s big, early bet on Millennials and Gen Z. Last year’s Platinum Card refresh — a simultaneous product upgrade and price hike — was perhaps the clearest demonstration yet of how much pricing power AmEx has built with its most aspirational customers.

A couple of fun Berkshire-related details:

• Lunch with Warren Buffett is exactly what you’d expect. “He orders in Big Macs and fries,” said Squeri, “and I insist he chuck the china plates and that we eat everything [right] out of the box.”

• When it mattered most, Squeri called Buffett. At the height of the pandemic, Squeri decided against layoffs and chose instead to invest in new cardholder benefits better suited to a quarantined world — an unconventional path that risked significant short-term losses. But, before committing, he rang his biggest shareholder for a gut check. After confirming AmEx had enough capital to weather the storm, Buffett gave his blessing: “What’s important is that during these times, you take care of your customers and you take care of your brand. If you lose customers and the aura of your brand, it’s hard to get them back.”

(10) In the coming months, McLane will deploy Aurora Innovation’s self-driving trucking technology along routes in Texas and the broader U.S. Sun Belt. The Berkshire-owned grocery and foodservice distributor has been running a supervised autonomous pilot program between Dallas and Houston since 2023. And, after accumulating 280,000 autonomous miles along this corridor, it’s ready to expand.

McLane settled on a thoughtful hybrid approach to the self-driving question. Aurora’s technology handles the long-haul “middle mile” between distribution centers — the long, highway-dominated stretches with predictable conditions. Human drivers take over for local delivery — with its increased operational complexity and occasional need for in-person relationship management. “Autonomous technology helps us drive greater efficiency across the supply chain,” said McLane Restaurant president Susan Adzick, “while our drivers remain focused on the critical last mile — and continuing to serve as the face of our company to customers.”