(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.”

You don’t need me to tell you that is a lot of money.

This mounting cash total continues to be something that divides opinions. Critics view Berkshire’s decision-makers as either too cautious or too patient for their own good. That a cash pile this size, sitting largely in T-Bills, is a drag on returns. Every quarter it grows larger is another quarter that this capital isn’t compounding.

Others, though, value the unparalleled optionality that this cash affords Abel and co. to pounce on any future market dislocations.

Count me in as a member of the latter camp.

When Mr. Market panics — and he will panic — Berkshire won’t be scrambling for a credit line or selling stock to raise cash. It will be one of the very few entities on Earth capable of moving capital at scale, on short notice, without constraint.

Abel and Buffett have not seen the kind of opportunity that clears their high bar — and they haven’t bent under the pressure to pretend otherwise. When said opportunity finally arrives, the financial firepower will be ready, waiting, and willing.

(2) One reason Berkshire’s cash keeps climbing: the conglomerate still isn’t buying back much of its own stock. When Abel appeared on CNBC in March and announced that he was restarting share repurchases after a nearly two-year hiatus, many investors — myself included — expected him to do so fairly aggressively. After all, the stock had mostly spun its wheels over the past year, cash was abundant, and Abel obviously felt that the value equation now tilted in favor of renewed repurchases.

But, as it turns out, Berkshire bought just $235 million of its own stock during the entire quarter. And almost all of it (~$225 million) came on March 4, the first day of the program. Which means that in the weeks that followed, as Berkshire’s stock price fell even further, the repurchases essentially stopped. Even the 10-Q filing admitted that the company had “acquired relatively minor amounts of treasury stock”.

The updated share count on the first page of the filing revealed that no further repurchases were made during the first two weeks of April, either.

(3) Berkshire’s stock portfolio finished the quarter valued at $288 billion. And, as Abel noted at the annual meeting, it remains a very concentrated one. The five largest positions — Apple, American Express, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, and Chevron — represent 61% of the total, down modestly from 65% at year-end.

Or, looking at it another way, the Core Four (Apple, AmEx, Coke, and Moody’s) plus the Japanese investments account for roughly $185 billion on their own. Abel has signaled these are largely permanent holdings, which will not be tinkered with much in the future. On that note, Buffett also confirmed at the AGM that Apple remains Berkshire’s single largest equity position.

Overall, Berkshire was a net seller of stocks for the fourteenth consecutive quarter — with $15.9 billion coming in and $24.1 billion going out — but that figure may not tell the whole story. If recent reports are accurate that Berkshire liquidated the holdings previously managed by Todd Combs following his departure for JPMorgan Chase, that alone could account for the bulk of the selling. (Ted Weschler manages just under $20 billion, so Combs presumably ran a comparable sum.)

Without the (reported) one-time sale of a former employee’s portfolio, Berkshire would have actually been a net buyer last quarter by a pretty significant margin.

(4) Operating earnings were always Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s preferred metric for evaluating Berkshire’s actual business performance. A number that cuts through the noise of unrealized gains and losses to reveal what the subsidiaries did — or did not — accomplish that quarter.

In Q1 2026, Berkshire reported $11.3 billion in operating earnings. Which, on its face, represents a 17.7% gain over the previous year — but probably needs an asterisk.

If you strip out the fluctuations from foreign currency exchange — removing this quarter’s $249 million “gain” and the $713 million “loss” in 2025 — the year-over-year operating earnings increase narrows to 7.2%. Which is still a very solid result.

(5) Berkshire’s insurance operations have two core objectives: underwrite at a profit and grow float over time. And, in the first quarter, they did both.

After-tax underwriting earnings came in at $1.7 billion — up from $1.3 billion a year ago — on a sparkling combined ratio of 87.8%.

Float, meanwhile, edged up $500 million to $176.9 billion. And because Berkshire earned an underwriting profit, the cost of that float is effectively negative. The conglomerate is being paid to hold — and put to work — other people’s money.

Whether float grows or shrinks by $500 million in any given quarter is largely beside the point. The long arc matters much more — and that has consistently pointed in an upward direction. Case in point: Berkshire’s float has effectively doubled since 2015.

(6) These underwriting results might seem difficult to square with Abel’s warning in his letter to shareholders that rising competition and falling rates would likely weigh on Berkshire’s insurance operations for some time. But he provided a simple explanation: Q1 2026 was essentially (and blessedly) catastrophe-free.

No significant loss events hit the books — in sharp contrast to Q1 2025, when California wildfires alone cost $860 million. Basically, the impressive headline number owes more to an absence of bad luck than to any improvement in the market cycle.

“We still see [insurance] as a softening market,” said Abel.

Still, a clean quarter is a clean quarter. And it’s never a bad thing to beat expectations in your first quarter as CEO.

(7) GEICO posted an “exceptional” 87.3% combined ratio, though pre-tax earnings fell from $2.2 billion to $1.4 billion on higher losses and expenses. Policies-in-force grew 2% in the quarter, though that number pales in comparison to Progressive’s 11%.

That gap is now the main focus for GEICO. “It’s not going to be easy to just restart the growth engine,” said Abel. Doing so will require the Berkshire-owned auto insurer to retain existing customers while simultaneously spending to attract new ones.

GEICO spent years pulling back to fix a cost structure that had badly deteriorated. And it worked. But that retreat came at a cost — market share ceded to Progressive and others who kept their foot on the gas while GEICO focused on getting its house in order. Now, it must lean back into growth without undoing the discipline it worked so hard to rebuild. A narrow path, but one well worth taking.

(8) BNSF Railway had a pretty strong quarter — growing earnings 13.4% to $1.4 billion — but more improvement is still on the menu. The railroad moved 2.2% more volume than a year ago, while operating with 260 fewer locomotives. That kind of efficiency gain (higher output with lower resources) allowed BNSF to increase its operating margin to 34.4%. It now ranks fourth among the six Class I railroads.

Progress… but not enough.

Abel told shareholders that “a step change” is still needed at BNSF to close the gap with Union Pacific and other Class I peers. UP just posted a 39.5% operating margin in the first quarter, while CSX (36.0%) and Canadian National (35.4%) also outpaced the Berkshire road.

Looking ahead, fuel prices present a double-edged sword for BNSF. Rising fuel costs make trucking more expensive, which tends to push shippers toward rail. Good news for BNSF’s bread-and-butter intermodal business. But if prices stay too high for too long, consumer spending and demand will weaken — and that would be a headwind across the entire railroad industry.

(9) Berkshire Hathaway Energy eked out a 1.5% gain to $1.1 billion in earnings. Natural gas pipelines were the clear standout — up 24.2% — while U.S. utilities (-16.1%) and other energy businesses (-26.5%) both dropped.

Two larger storylines caught my eye:

• Abel discussed the surging demand for data center power infrastructure and made clear that Berkshire is interested — on its own terms. BHE will pursue data center buildouts, but only if the hyperscalers themselves bear the full cost of construction and ongoing operation. Existing utility customers will not subsidize these massive costs. It’s a disciplined framework that lets BHE participate in one of the most consequential infrastructure buildout cycles in decades without socializing the risk and cost across unrelated customers.

• As readers of this newsletter already know, the long-running wildfire litigation against BHE subsidiary PacifiCorp recently took a big turn in Berkshire’s favor. An appellate court found that the jury had been incorrectly instructed in how to apply evidence across all class members (despite some of the fires occurring more than 100 miles apart) and it was reversed and remanded accordingly. The circuit court has since stayed all remaining trials and ordered mediation. Abel called this an “exceptional outcome” and described the case as now being “back to first base”.

(10) The sprawling Manufacturing, Service & Retailing segment delivered $3.2 billion in overall earnings. But, as always, it’s something of a mixed bag with so many different businesses and industries in play.

Some subsidiaries of note:

• Precision Castparts continued its comeback. Revenue came in at $2.9 billion, with growth across both aerospace and industrial gas turbine power products, and pre-tax earnings surged 32.9%. That comparison is somewhat flattered by costs from the SPS Technologies fire a year ago — but PCC is humming along.

• International Metalworking Companies (IMC) posted $1.2 billion in revenue and a 41.9% jump in pre-tax earnings, though the company itself cautioned that customers pulled purchases forward in the first quarter and this pace will not hold up through the rest of the year.

• New addition OxyChem generated $1.2 billion in revenue, but recorded a small pre-tax loss — a product of acquisition accounting amortization rather than any operational weakness. Abel clearly likes what he sees: “Their plants can’t be replicated,” he said. “We’ve got valuable assets [there].”

• Clayton Homes, which Abel called the “bellwether” of the Building Products group, saw pre-tax earnings fall 8.7% to $393 million.

  • The rest of the Building Products coterie suffered an earnings drop of 9.7% amid general housing weakness. Another reason for the decline is that Acme Brick was moved out of this segment and into Marmon at the start of the year.

• Brooks Running ranks as one of the quarter’s most compelling growth stories. (I did my part with a new pair of Ghost 17s.) North American sales rose 20%, while China — a market Brooks has been quietly and deliberately building — grew an extraordinary 136%. The brand even reached #1 in performance running footwear at U.S. specialty retail. “Our record quarter is proof our long-term strategy is resonating,” said CEO Dan Sheridan.

• Pilot remains complicated. The numbers still look pretty grisly, as pre-tax earnings declined $218 million to a $50 million loss, even as revenue rose $815 million on higher fuel prices. The forward-looking narrative at the travel center network is the capital campaign underway to modernize its aging store base. CEO Adam Wright told CNBC that Pilot has been investing $500-700 million annually in facility upgrades — and plans to maintain that pace through 2028 or 2029. “Right now,” said Wright, “about 26% of [our stores] are older than fifteen years. We want that under 10% by [the end of] that timeframe.”

Heading into the meeting, Warren noted that Berkshire stock was then trading at a 7% discount to his fair value estimate of $765,000 (Class A) and $510 (Class B).

Whitney Tilson sees an even wider gap between price and value. After crunching the latest 10-Q numbers, he revised his intrinsic value estimate upward to $822,000 (A) and $548 (B). “I’m especially bullish because in addition to today’s discounted stock price, I’m optimistic that Abel can create value via operational improvements and capital allocation.” That combination, he argues, makes Berkshire highly likely to beat the S&P 500 over the next five years — “perhaps by a margin of 2-3%”.

(2) Numbers tell one story. People another. The Omaha World-Herald offered an interesting glimpse into Greg Abel beyond the balance sheet — and his penchant for lunch at California Tacos & More whenever in town. “Greg comes into the restaurant quite often,” said owner Brad Bogard, “and it’s been a pleasure getting to know him.”

What Bogard noticed most, though, wasn’t Abel’s order — usually beef tacos or smoked spare ribs — but his manner. He called Abel “the perfect choice as Berkshire CEO” and described a man who treats every member of the staff with kindness and interest in what they have to say. As such, Bogard feels bullish about the future. “Greg will multiply Warren’s efforts [at Berkshire],” he said. “You take it from me.”

(3) Warren Buffett once said of Ajit Jain that if he, Charlie Munger, and Jain were all in a sinking boat and you could only save one of them — save Ajit. In other words, Berkshire’s vice chairman of insurance operations is pretty much irreplaceable. But, even so, preparations must be made for the 74-year-old’s eventual retirement.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Berkshire has designated Charlie Shamieh, chairman of Gen Re, as the heir apparent to Jain’s insurance throne. For his part, Jain “hasn’t signaled when he will step down” and “is expected to remain in the role for the foreseeable future”. Buffett himself told the Journal earlier this year that Jain would “probably … be at the company for as long as he can”.

Which, knowing his devotion to the business, could be quite a long time.

The Journal acknowledged as much, noting that if Jain’s tenure extends well into the future, Berkshire may consider other candidates that better fit the new timeline. But, at least for the time being, Shamieh is next man up.

(And, in a case of absolutely perfect timing, the just-released new 25th anniversary edition of The Warren Buffett CEO features a rare interview and profile of Shamieh.)

(4) In the days leading up to Berkshire’s annual meeting, new CEO Greg Abel made it crystal clear that he intends to lead the conglomerate for a long time to come. “My runway is really long,” he told CNBC’s Becky Quick. “I love doing this. I want our shareholders to know there’s absolute commitment and passion.”

Abel waved off any concern that family life and corporate leadership are at odds — framing the two not as competing obligations pulling in opposite directions, but as parallel sources of purpose. “I have a great family,” he said. “I prioritize my family and I prioritize Berkshire — and I know how to find the [right] balance.”

“When I said [I hoped to run Berkshire for] twenty years in the letter, that would not surprise me. But that’s up to our board, obviously, and our shareholders. We have to be doing a great job. I love Berkshire and I see myself in this role for a long time.”

(5) In the same interview, Abel also revealed plans to sit down personally with the incoming chief executives of two of Berkshire’s most consequential investees — Apple and Coca-Cola. (Henrique Braun recently succeeded James Quincey at Coke and John Ternus will take the reins from Tim Cook at Apple on September 1.)

“We know the quality of [both] businesses,” said Abel. “The boards are exceptional. They’re going to have thought this through very clearly and have the right leader. Time always tells, but the reality is we’re excited by the leaders coming in and very supportive of what the prior two leaders have done. It’s remarkable what they’ve done with those two businesses.”

• Apple’s iPhone sales surged 22% in the first quarter. “We’re seeing double-digit growth across the markets we track,” said Cook on the earnings call, “and set a new March quarter record for upgraders, as well. What’s driving all of this is that customer satisfaction for the iPhone 17 family in the U.S. is 99%. These numbers are unheard of. We’re thrilled with how things are going.”

• Under its new CEO, Coca-Cola sees artificial intelligence as “a superpower for us moving forward”. Not only has the soft drink giant used generative AI to produce its last two holiday ad campaigns — “at a fraction of the cost and way faster than we used to” — but also hopes to harness the data flowing through Coke’s vast global network of bottlers to identify better product and sales strategies.

(6) Brooks CEO Dan Sheridan is navigating what seems, on paper, as a double transition. The handoff from Warren Buffett to Greg Abel as Berkshire’s chief executive — but also a new reporting line to Adam Johnson, the incoming president of the Consumer Products, Service & Retailing group. But, in practice, the changes have barely made a ripple. “It’s been very consistent for us over the years in reporting to Greg,” he told Yahoo Finance, “and we anticipate the same thing [with Adam].”

The through-line in all of this is Berkshire’s culture of deserved trust — the foundational principle that capable managers are given room to run their businesses without interference from Omaha and that the relationship between parent and subsidiary is built on confidence rather than oversight.

“Over the years,” added Sheridan, “Greg has been just a great partner to us at Brooks. Sage advice all the time you need it. Now, we’re transitioning to Adam Johnson — who I report directly to — and Adam has been incredible in his first few months here. He and I connected yesterday and I would say the exact same thing [about him] — very consistent leadership here at Berkshire.”

(7) Adam Johnson may now oversee the 32 members of Berkshire’s Consumer Products, Service & Retailing group, but he also remains the proud CEO of NetJets. And, at the AGM last weekend, he shared a handful of fun facts about the company.

• Start with Augusta, GA, and the legendary Masters golf tournament. In a single week, NetJets operated more than 700 flights there. On that Friday alone: 140.

• Then there is Teterboro and West Palm Beach, two airports that together account for 10% of everything NetJets does across the entire planet. “We fly out of 3,100 airports,” said Johnson, “and those two [are 10%].”

• Zoom out further and the scale becomes difficult to process. Somewhere in the world, a NetJets aircraft lands every 57 seconds.

• And the fleet to support it just keeps growing. “We’re at 1,104 airplanes worldwide right now,” said Johnson, “and taking [delivery of] a new airplane about every three-and-a-half days.”

(8) Berkshire Hathaway sold another 1.22 million shares of Davita last week — generating $182.9 million in proceeds and reducing its ownership stake to 44.9%. This is not a case of changing sentiment about the dialysis provider, but a result of the Share Repurchase Agreement between the two companies. When Davita buys back its own shares on the open market, Berkshire’s ownership percentage naturally rises — and these quarterly sales bring it back down below the agreed-upon 45% limit.

Elsewhere, two of the Japanese trading houses announced that Berkshire recently raised its ownership position above 10%. Berkshire’s stake in Marubeni increased from 9.32% to 10.10%, while Sumitomo jumped from 9.30% to 10.05%.

(9) After better-than-expected first quarter results, Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane sat down with CNBC’s Mad Money to discuss the company’s turnaround story. And it all started with his decision — possibly at Berkshire’s urging — to pause separation plans and refocus all efforts on growing the business.

“When I came in,” he said, “the company was very focused on the separation. When you take 36,000 people and redirect them towards a maniacal focus on growing the top line — not in separating the business — it’s amazing what you can achieve with that type of human capital.”

Cahillane traced Kraft Heinz’s troubles back to the 2015 merger and 3G Capital’s ruthless cost discipline. “Where the company missed the mark [after the merger] was that all the cost savings generated — which were quite substantial — flowed directly to the bottom line,” he said. “EBITDA margins went up to close to 30%, [but] there was not enough investment put back into the brands to attend to the top line.” He aims to rectify that by investing $600 million to boost North American sales.

(10) Happy trails to Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub, who will retire next month. Her tenure will surely be remembered for big M&A swings like Anadarko (2019) and CrownRock (2024) — which, together, pulled Occidental’s portfolio from a sprawling global footprint into one overwhelmingly concentrated in the United States. Whether the debt load those deals required proves worth it remains open to debate, no one can ever accuse Hollub of not having the courage of her convictions.

Her successor, Richard Jackson, joined Occidental in 2003 and was named chief operating officer just a few months ago. He brings deep hands-on experience in onshore oil and gas operations and enhanced oil recovery — the technical disciplines that will likely define Occidental’s performance in the years ahead.

One more thing: Last night, Berkshire announced that retiring CFO Marc Hamburg will be given up to 30 flight hours per year on NetJets “in recognition of [his] many decades of service”. This benefit will be available to Hamburg and his wife until 2037. Berkshire estimates the cost (including covering the imputed tax) at $490,000 per year.

He did something harder.

He proved he doesn’t need to be.

For decades, the Berkshire AGM was geared around two singular personalities — Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger — whose wit, candor, and accumulated wisdom made the gathering something between an investment masterclass and a secular pilgrimage. This year, with Charlie gone and Warren sitting off stage, this festival of capitalism had to forge a new identity.

And I think Abel gave it one.

Rather than reach for Buffett’s philosophical fireside manner, Abel offered something different — depth, detail, and a commanding operational fluency across the far-flung corners of the conglomerate. Where Buffett dazzled with aphorism and analogy, Abel impressed with granular specificity and a clear vision for what comes next.

It felt, at times, like drinking from a firehose. A long, substantive immersion in Berkshire’s many businesses — the kind that had faded a bit in recent years as Warren and Charlie embraced their roles as elder statesmen opining on loftier subjects.

Whether Abel was describing how Berkshire’s metals businesses fit together, laying out a roadmap for “Narrow AI” at BNSF Railway (and beyond), or dissecting the regulatory friction currently hampering Berkshire Hathaway Energy — the man had clearly done his homework.

“That is Greg’s wheelhouse,” said director Chris Davis. “He’s just a fabulous operator.”

“He knows these businesses like the back of his hand,” agreed Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub during the CNBC halftime show.

Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick put it simply: “I love the fact that they are actually doing more of a deep dive into the businesses. You’re never going to replace the Warren and Charlie dynamic, [so] I think that’s a great pivot.”

I always felt like I learned something new from Warren and Charlie at the AGM.

And, happily, that tradition seems to be in safe hands.

Warren Buffett may not have been on stage — but he was everywhere else.

Berkshire Hathaway wisely wove the retired Oracle into the day’s events as much as humanly possible. The meeting opened with Greg Abel retiring Buffett’s “number” in the rafters of the CHI Health Center Arena, alongside Charlie Munger’s.

From his front-row seat, Buffett then grabbed the microphone and offered his verdict on his successor — “He’s very, very, very smart about businesses” — before labeling the entire leadership transition “100% successful”.

Before turning the spotlight back over to Abel, he also asked retiring Apple CEO Tim Cook to take a bow for stewarding Berkshire’s biggest investment so well. (FYI: That’s incoming CEO John Ternus sitting to the left of Cook.)

Abel, for his part, joked that after Buffett’s surprise retirement announcement last year, he half-expected only the board and his family to show up at the 2026 meeting. The crowd was indeed lighter — inevitable, given the circumstances — but I imagine everyone in attendance was thrilled to see Buffett still playing a biggish role.

After Abel wrapped up his “very fulsome” business update, an AI deepfake of Buffett asked the first question of the Q&A session. Which was either a charming tribute or a mild existential provocation — depending on your disposition.

Finally, backstage, Buffett sat for a 25-minute interview with Becky Quick after the lunch break — and delivered some vintage wisdom.

“It isn’t our ideal environment in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire,” he said. “We can pick our spots and nobody can tell us what to do exactly — so sometimes we’re doing nothing. But, other times, we get quite active.”

“Of the sixty years I’ve been in the business,” he added, “probably [only] five of them have been really juicy.”

Berkshire Hathaway has never felt an urgency to act for the sake of acting — and that doesn’t look to be changing any time soon.

I don’t get the sense that the conglomerate’s $380 billion will burn a hole in Greg Abel’s pocket any faster than it did for Warren Buffett. He made clear that Berkshire’s culture — its refusal to be rushed, its allergy to ego-driven dealmaking — is no relic of the Buffett era. But something to be nurtured and cultivated for decades to come.

• Abel invoked his predecessor’s legendary congressional testimony during the Salomon Brothers scandal — “Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding, [but] lose a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless” — and declared it Berkshire’s “anthem” for all time.

• “We do not intend to [ever] be beholden to anyone,” said Abel of the company’s massive cash pile. But he also pledged to “act decisively and with significant capital” when the right buying moment arrives. “One of our greatest strengths at Berkshire is patience.” Enough said.

• Vice chairman of insurance operations Ajit Jain and Abel — who shared an easy rapport together on stage — both made the same essential argument: saying no to almost everything is what makes the rare yes so powerful. “Insurance,” said Jain, “much like investing, is a game that requires patience. It is very difficult to get people to sit back and do nothing.” He even structures insurance compensation so that underwriters are not financially disadvantaged for not writing business.

• Abel recounted a proud moment when, during a deposition, someone asked the witness to describe him as a CEO and manager. “Well,” the person replied, “all [Greg ever] says is no.” We might have a new Abominable No-Man on our hands. Somewhere out there, Charlie is smiling.

Greg Abel used the term “operational excellence” several times on Saturday.

And, in the run-up to the annual meeting, lead director Sue Decker explained why that particular emphasis could pay big dividends in the future. “The company has grown so much,” she told CNBC, “that what has become more important is growing the operating earnings versus the capital allocation piece of this.”

“If you think about the operating earnings now are $45 billion after tax — and a 12% increase on that is $5.5 billion. That’s as much as Burlington Northern makes a year. So just having the focus on execution and growing those operating earnings can add a Burlington Northern every year without making an acquisition.”

She invoked the Steve Jobs ➡️ Tim Cook parallel to hammer home her point.

“[Cook] didn’t try to be a better Steve Jobs,” said Decker. “Steve laid a great foundation and he scaled it and grew the market cap from $350 billion to $4 trillion now. 10x. That speaks to the fact that the right leader, at any given time, may change based on the operating conditions of the company. Warren has handed Greg an incredible foundation and now he needs to compound that by improving the operations.”

The era of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger is irreplaceable. No one argues that. But what this weekend showed is that this next chapter will have its own distinct logic and someone at the top with a vision for the future. Abel is no philosopher-king, but an operator’s operator. A man who spent decades learning Berkshire from the inside out, subsidiary by subsidiary, deal by deal. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

But, tomorrow, a new one begins.

Greg Abel takes center stage as CEO for the first time — and a few new faces will join him up on the dais throughout the day. Abel will deliver a general business update at 9:30 a.m. ET, before opening the floor to questions alongside vice chairman Ajit Jain.

After lunch, he will return with BNSF Railway CEO Katie Farmer and Berkshire’s new President of Consumer Products, Service and Retailing (plus NetJets CEO) Adam Johnson in tow for the afternoon Q&A session. Watch the whole thing here.

The full schedule for tomorrow’s proceedings:

And, don’t forget, the fun really kicks off at 8 a.m. ET when Berkshire releases its Q1 2026 earnings report. A little light reading to whet our appetites for the main event.

(2) Will as many people still show up for a Buffett-less meeting?

Early signs say yes. Berkshire told CNBC last week that credential requests are tracking closely with previous years — running slightly behind 2024 and 2025, but ahead of 2023. Perhaps that’s an indication that Berkshire as an institution is bigger than any one person. Even when that person happens to be Warren Buffett.

It helps, of course, that not everyone making the trip to Omaha is chasing investment wisdom. Berkshire noted that Nebraska residents make up about 60% of attendees — with many coming as much for the shareholder discounts at NFM and Borsheims as anything else. Berkshire is, at heart, a collection of businesses that people genuinely love. That’s one thing that hopefully never changes — no matter who is CEO.

(3) Chris Bloomstran of Semper Augustus — whose annual client letters are essential Berkshire reading — sat down with The Investor’s Podcast ahead of this weekend’s meeting. The wide-ranging discussion touched on his own intrinsic value estimate for Berkshire, the conglomerate’s recent performance, and how fresh capital flooding into insurance markets will likely give Ajit Jain and co. pause.

Regarding the meeting itself, Bloomstran predicts something of a tonal shift from the Buffett and Munger era. “I expect this [AGM] to be a heck of a lot more business focused,” he said. “It’s going to be shorter, but hearing from these folks running the subsidiaries about what’s going on and what concerns them is going to be great.”

Basically: Fewer life lessons, more operational detail.

(4) Bloomstran also laid out his own framework for evaluating Greg Abel. It hearkens back to something Charlie Munger used to say — that when you get a trip to the pie counter, you best load up your plate. You won’t get many chances, after all.

“I’m going to judge Greg by how hard he leans into opportunity when it comes,” he said, “and it’s [probably] only going to come in a crisis or a recession.”

That’s when Abel must prove his mettle — even though such opportunities are often more palatable in hindsight than in the heat of the moment.

“It’s not easy when you’re staring down the barrel of a financial crisis,” said Bloomstran. “It’s not that easy to pull the trigger.”

(5) The second edition of The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway hit bookstores earlier this week. The original chronicled Berkshire’s journey up through 2019 — a rigorous, year-by-year accounting of how Buffett and Munger built one of the most consequential businesses in American history.

But, in light of Buffett’s retirement, author knew an update was in order.

This new edition completes the arc of Buffett’s tenure atop the conglomerate, capturing the final chapters of his legendary capital allocation record.

I caught up with Adam to find out more about the new material and why this book deserves a spot on every serious investor’s bookshelf.

Q: Can you run through some key points that you added to the second edition?

Mead: Apple became 50% of the investment portfolio before being sold down to a still-large 25% of the portfolio and giving Berkshire a $90 billion gain in 2024 alone.

Alleghany is interesting. When you think about how large it is by itself — its insurance operation, multiple non-insurance businesses — and yet it amounted to just 2.4% of Berkshire’s equity capital. Said another way, it consumed just three months of Berkshire’s cash generation. Incredible!

The Japanese investments were a masterstroke of simply searching the world for opportunity and acting on it. Not only that, but financing it with 1% yen-denominated bonds that also mitigated currency risk.

Pilot was a fascinating story that brought rare intrigue into the halls of Berkshire Hathaway. I enjoyed writing about Pilot not only because of the story but because of the details that came out because of it. The lawsuit specifically stated the valuation metric Berkshire used [in the acquisition].

I think Alleghany demonstrates the challenge moving forward. The figures have become so large. Berkshire will need big acquisitions. But it can also make a lot of progress on other fronts. Berkshire repurchased $72 billion worth of its own shares between 2020 and 2024. That will move the needle over time!

Q: You have studied Berkshire’s history in painstaking detail. What did you learn about the business that you couldn’t have gotten any other way?

Mead: In a relatively short 825 pages — I said relatively — you can view the entire history of Berkshire. I learned things from my own writing about Berkshire during the editing process, where I went back and read longer sections all at once.

Two things stand out — what doesn’t change and what does.

What doesn’t change is the basic strategy of doing the best with what’s in front of you at any given time, given the opportunity set, and applying what Munger called basic horse sense. A rational business-owner approach to looking at public and private companies.

What does change over time is the opportunities and the magnitude of things. Read about Scott Fetzer, for example. A company that nearly doubled Berkshire’s revenues and was a major contributor to its success in the ‘80s and ‘90s. That business is literally a footnote today as part of Marmon and is mentioned only once in the 2025 annual report. That’s because those businesses didn’t grow — [even though] they’re still good businesses — but Berkshire grew around it, in part funded by the cash generated from Scott Fetzer’s two dozen or so subsidiaries.

Looking back helps keep the present in context. The numbers are big today — huge, even — but consider the figures we’ll be talking about in ten or twenty years!

Q: How will the Abel era differ from the Buffett era in terms of capital allocation?

Mead: Just the sheer size of Berkshire demands a different approach to capital allocation. Berkshire can’t buy tiny businesses — and its universe of big businesses is shrinking. That said, there are huge opportunities for Berkshire.

The energy sector is going to need massive amounts of capital investment. Guess who knows that business intimately and has hundreds of billions of dollars in capital behind him? Greg Abel.

Additionally, Berkshire mainly operates in the United States. We may see more international deals along the lines of the Japanese trading houses and Tokio Marine insurance. The Abel era might just be one of global expansion as the Berkshire brand and reputation go beyond North America.

(6) Speaking of books… One of my low-key favorite things about the annual meeting is Berkshire’s list of “approved” books for sale through The Bookworm. It’s always nice to know which Berkshire-related titles get the coveted Buffett and Abel imprimatur.

Four new selections make their debut on the list this year:

• 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — And How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin

• Streetwise: Getting To & Through Goldman Sachs by Lloyd Blankfein

• Courage of a Nation: Three Years of War by Howard Buffett

• Ukraine: Four Years of War by Howard Buffett

(7) On the Excess Returns podcast, Berkshire director Chris Davis talked about the conglomerate’s future. “If I could write the headline for Berkshire five years from now,” said Davis, “I would say that Berkshire was a great investment company that became a great operating company.”

For most of its modern history, Berkshire has been understood primarily through the lens of Buffett the investor. The operating businesses took a backseat in the public imagination, vessels for capital rather than the point of the enterprise. What Davis describes is a company whose center of gravity has shifted — where the subsidiaries themselves (and the people running them) become the primary story.

“You have extremely long-lived assets,” he continued. “You’ve got a very peculiar culture that is very much rational, very long-term oriented, very skeptical of Wall Street fads and mania — and run with this idea that we’re building something that has got to last through everything.”

(8) NFM store manager Scott Baker has seen it all over the years at Berkshire annual meetings. “I remember when the meeting was at the Holiday Inn Central,” he told Omaha’s KETV station, “and Warren would just pull up in this old Ford LTD and he would just go in. It’s a lot bigger deal than that now.”

That might be the understatement of the weekend.

NFM will operate a massive booth on the sales floor at CHI Health Center Arena — along with hosting a tent party at the store itself with live music and food from Weber Grill. It’s the kind of thing that makes the Berkshire AGM feel less like a run-of-the-mill shareholders meeting and more like “Woodstock for Capitalists”.

And, for Baker, that’s the entire point. “People come from all over the world to this,” he said. “It’s like a pilgrimage to come see it. We want to put our best foot forward and want people to have a good time and see what we’re [all] about.”

“I think this meeting will look very similar to previous meetings. Greg [has been] a fixture with Berkshire for a long time. Some people may skip because it’s not the Warren and Charlie show [anymore], but I also think a lot of people will come now because they want to see what Greg has to say. I think it will be a similar meeting, but you never know what’s going to happen in the future.”

(9) Bloomberg reports that Sirius XM and iHeartMedia are in preliminary talks about a possible merger. A deal would bring together the largest satellite radio service in the country with the largest terrestrial radio owner in an industry rapidly losing ground to streaming. Sirius XM and iHeart are, in different ways, the same story: legacy audio businesses built for a pre-Spotify world, now fighting for relevance against streaming platforms that have conditioned an entire generation to expect infinite music, podcasts, and audiobooks on demand.

(10) Even at 95, Warren Buffett is still winning over the critics. Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones admitted recently that, for many years, he got Buffett all wrong. “I used to just sit there and rail on Warren Buffett — year after year after year,” he told the Invest Like The Best podcast. “I would self-congratulate myself for trashing him because [I thought] he just happened to be in the right place at the right time and caught this bull market.”

That’s a critique Buffett has faced from time to time. That he was simply a product of his era, who just so happened to come along and ride the greatest sustained bull market wave in American history. That’s how Tudor Jones long viewed the Oracle — but he has since reconsidered that opinion.

“What I realize now,” he said, “is what an idiot I was. That guy is a flipping genius because he understood the power of compound interest, which I somehow managed brilliantly to avoid my entire career.”

Tudor Jones also lavished praise on the other half of the Berkshire duo. “[Buffett] was so smart that he partnered with Charlie Munger,” he said. “Charlie was clearly a tremendous genius in his own right. Whereas Warren would buy fifty-cent dollars, Charlie understood the power of compounding for companies that were growing all the time. The two of them together… Man, what a combination.”

But, in hindsight, it was a moment frozen in time.

Two of the three have since left Berkshire, making this one of the very few chances we ever got to hear from them all together. Consider it a fascinating time capsule. Enjoy!

Becky Quick: We have a rare interview with Berkshire Hathaway investment managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler — plus Tracy Britt Cool, who is Warren Buffett’s financial assistant. All three of them are here. This is a rare treat because I don’t think you three have ever sat down together for an interview, have you?

All: No. This is the first one. (Laughs)

Quick: I’d love to hear why you chose Berkshire Hathaway — and how you found your way to Berkshire because each of you had a very different path. Todd, let’s talk a little bit about when you first talked to Buffett. When did that happen?

Todd Combs: Well, I reached out to Charlie and we had a series of conversations over the course of several months before, one day, I was out visiting in L.A. and he said — out of the blue after a three- or four-hour breakfast — in classic Charlie style, that Warren would really like to meet me. Not that I’d really like to meet Warren. (Laughs)

He went on for about five or ten minutes about how much Warren would like to meet me and so forth. So I came out to Omaha and Warren and I spent the day together talking about everything from baseball to business and insurance.

It was just very interesting.

Quick: You’ve moved your whole family to Omaha. When did you move?

Combs: That’s right. After I joined, the kids finished out the year in school back in Connecticut and we moved the entire family out right after I joined. So we’ve been out here, I guess, coming up on about three years now. It’s been wonderful.

Quick: And you guys love Omaha.

Combs: Absolutely. My wife and the kids all love it. It’s been an absolutely wonderful experience. Omaha is a great town — and the people really make it [that way]. It’s just been an excellent experience.

Quick: Ted, I love your story, too, for how you came here. Over the course of two years, you paid $5.3 million for two lunches with Warren. How did that happen?

Ted Weschler: Donated $5.3 million. (Laughs)

Warren Buffett: I like your rendition. (Laughs)

Weschler: I had been reading Warren’s letters probably since 1979 when I started college. It was kind of a bucket list thing for me, that I always wanted to meet the guy. And, as you know, the GLIDE Foundation, a terrific charity in San Francisco, does an annual auction [for a lunch with Buffett].1

I wanted to know more about GLIDE, so I actually spent half a day out at GLIDE, understanding the charity. I thought, “Hey, this is a terrific charity. They really help the otherwise helpless.” And I bid on the auction and ended up winning.

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Abel also spent much of the past year immersed in Berkshire’s insurance operations, logging significant time with vice chairman Ajit Jain. Who, I was happy to read, will be sticking around through this leadership transition — and beyond. Buffett put it simply: “[Jain] is probably going to be at the company for as long as he can.”

But perhaps the sharpest break from the Buffett era will be one of temperament. Whereas Buffett famously tolerated occasional underperformance — reluctant to confront managers he liked and admired — Abel shows much less sentimentality.

According to WSJ sources, that harder edge may even include selling struggling subsidiaries outright. Abel himself acknowledged that while some things will change, the bedrock of Berkshire is here to stay. “Warren, Charlie, and I — we have some differences, just in style and obviously in how we approach things,” he said, “[but] our foundational values continue to be what we build our company through.”

(2) In light of the shocking Combs news, Barron’s tried to piece together which stocks from the Berkshire portfolio might have ended up on the chopping block. We’ll get the official answer next month when Berkshire files its 13-F for Q1 2026, but some of the suspected names include Amazon, VeriSign, Capital One Financial, Visa, and Mastercard. Notably, Berkshire already sold close to 80% of its Amazon position late last year — which, in hindsight, may have been the opening act of a broader cull.

For fifteen years, guessing which manager was responsible for which investment has been something of a parlor game among Berkshire shareholders. Now, if this report is true, we might finally get some much-appreciated clarity.

Whatever remains in the portfolio becomes something of a Rosetta Stone. The holdings that survive are, by process of elimination, either Weschler buys or Buffett buys — and, based on size, we should have a pretty good idea which are which.

(3) Tim Cook will step down as Apple CEO on September 1 — handing the reins over to John Ternus, the company’s head of hardware engineering. Cook praised his successor as having “the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor”.

Ternus heralds a new direction for Apple after Cook’s operations-focused tenure. “Cook has never been a product person,” wrote John Gruber at Daring Fireball, “and to his credit, he never once pretended to be.” Cook understood exactly who he was, played ruthlessly to those strengths, and never wasted an ounce of energy pretending to be something he was not. In an era of CEOs cosplaying as visionary geniuses, that kind of honesty and humility is rarer than it looks.

Cook’s strengths served Apple extraordinarily well. The 2010s didn’t call for another Steve Jobs, but rather someone who could transform the iPhone from a breakthrough piece of technology into a global industrial phenomenon. Someone who could build supply chains of staggering complexity, manage a sprawling international operation, and guide Apple to become (on multiple occasions) the world’s most valuable company.

That was all Tim Cook.

But every era ends — and the demands on Apple have likewise shifted over time. “Today,” continued Gruber, “it feels like Apple needs a product guy at the helm again. John Ternus, more than anyone else at the company, seems like that person.”

(4) Warren Buffett, as expected, heaped praise on Cook after the announcement. “Apple would not be the Apple of today without Tim Cook,” he told Becky Quick. “What he has done with Apple could not be done by anybody I’ve known. Covering the world and getting along with countries with all kinds of histories and doing right by the customer, people who worked for him, certainly the shareholders — which we were lucky enough to be one of — he’s one of a kind.”

Cook, much like Buffett, will now become executive chairman of the company he long led. Both men, having built something extraordinary, are betting that the right successor — given the right support — can carry it forward. Cook, for his part, sounds excited about this next chapter. “My energy is high,” he told Apple employees earlier this week, “and I plan to be in this new role for a long time.”

(5) Ternus inherits a company in fine fettle. Let’s start with the number that matters most for any consumer franchise — customer loyalty. A new smartphone survey from SellCell found that 96.4% of iPhone users say their next phone will be another iPhone. That’s the highest figure ever recorded, up from 91.9% just five years ago. Android users, meanwhile, are nearly four times more likely to jump ship to another brand.

The stickiness runs deeper still. More than 83% of iPhone users have lived inside the Apple ecosystem for over five years, compared to just 34% of Android users who have stuck with the same brand that long. (That comparison comes with an asterisk, though, as Android spans many manufacturers while Apple stands alone as a single, unified choice.) Still, the directional story is hard to argue with. Once Apple has you as a customer, it tends to keep you as a customer.

iPhone shipments surged 20% in China during the first quarter, even as the broader smartphone market contracted 4%. That’s not only the fastest growth rate among any of the top six brands, but was also enough to push Apple’s market share up to 19% — just a single point behind hometown hero Huawei. The iPhone 17 lineup continues to punch well above expectations in a market that some had written off as structurally hostile to California-based Apple.

(6) AM Best reaffirmed GEICO’s superior financial strength and exceptional long-term issuer credit ratings. The Berkshire-owned auto insurer posted a combined ratio of 85.5% last year, which translated into nearly $4.2 billion in underwriting gains. Policyholders’ surplus has grown at double-digit rates in each of the past three years. And on both five- and ten-year averages, GEICO continues to outpace the private passenger auto insurance industry composite on operating profitability.

The engine powering this performance is GEICO’s direct business model, which confers “a considerable underwriting expense advantage” over competitors. Fewer intermediaries, lower costs, better economics — it’s a structural edge that will not erode in one bad quarter or industry cycle.

AM Best also extended the same top-tier ratings to National Indemnity. The insurer that started it all now serves as Berkshire’s internal financial backbone — providing capital relief to subsidiaries through quota shares and loss portfolio transfers, quietly absorbing any pressure so that other parts of the conglomerate can breathe. In effect, NICO makes the whole system more resilient than the sum of its parts.

The balance sheet that enables this role is, by any measure, extraordinary. AM Best notes that National Indemnity carries the largest balance sheet in the insurance market, paired with relatively low underwriting leverage. That combination — vast capacity and conservative positioning — allows NICO to weather shocks that would cripple competitors and deploy capital at moments when others must retreat.

(7) A second Berkshire subsidiary is now in the Lionel Messi business ahead of this summer’s World Cup. A few weeks after NetJets revealed its own partnership with the soccer icon, Duracell followed suit and debuted a new ad campaign in the same vein as its viral Super Bowl commercial with Tom Brady. The Messi spot — in which generic batteries fail him at the worst moment and only Duracell can save the day — will run throughout the heavily-watched tournament.

“When we first did Brady,” said Duracell vice president Todd Midura, “we didn’t have visions necessarily of making this a long-standing campaign or something we would do more than once. But it got a great reception. People got the message of the ad and we thought about what could we do [for] the next step? We looked at what was going to be big in culture next.” The answer: Messi and the World Cup.

(8) Dairy Queen will soon roll out an AI-powered chatbot to take drive-thru orders. The technology comes from Presto — which has already deployed similar systems at Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, and other quick-service chains — and sports a 90% accuracy rate. To field-test the new system, Dairy Queen handed it the most demanding trial imaginable: the chaos of Free Cone Day. “The bots responded to lines of cars,” said DQ executive vice president Kevin Baartman, “and never got crabby.”

Score one for the machines, I guess.

(9) The Financial Times shared a few additional details about Berkshire’s strategic partnership with Tokio Marine. After Berkshire made the initial approach last summer, the two sides spent months working through the structural mechanics of how any joint acquisitions would actually work. Ajit Jain led negotiations directly with Tokio Marine CEO Masahiro Koike. They expect to focus on “a small number of large deals in areas that make sense for both”. Quality over quantity.

The FT’s reporting also served as a timely reminder of just how elegant the original Japanese trading house investments turned out to be. Last year, Berkshire received an estimated $862 million in dividends from these five holdings — against just $135 million in yen-denominated interest costs used to finance the positions.

Basically, Berkshire borrowed cheaply in yen, bought world-class businesses at reasonable prices, and now collects dividends at a ratio of more than six-to-one over its financing costs. No wonder Charlie Munger once likened these investments to “God opening a chest and just pouring [in] money”.

Greg Abel’s framing, though, was a bit more understated. “We treasure our original five Japanese equity investments,” he told the FT, “and together we continue to look for opportunities of mutual benefit.”

(10) Back when Vicki Hollub took the helm of Occidental Petroleum more than a decade ago, half of the company’s production came from the Middle East and other international operations. But, today, 83% of production occurs right here in the United States. “We made the decision that, geopolitically, we needed to be more of a U.S. company,” she told Fox Business Network last week, and spent much of her time atop the O&G giant repositioning its portfolio in a more domestic direction.

“We [also] more than doubled our resource potential from 2015 to now,” continued Hollub. “We were 668,000 BOE per day of production then [and] we’re 1.4 million now.”

I am currently down in sunny Florida — battling the heat, humidity, and a little Achilles tendinitis — as I get ready to run (well, more like power-walk) in a few races. I don’t feel terribly optimistic that said Achilles will hold up the entire time, but any and all happy thoughts would be much appreciated!

(1) There is a big difference between admiring Berkshire Hathaway from the outside and absorbing its teachings from within. Here are a few more lessons learned by Jim Weber at Brooks that didn’t quite fit into Tuesday’s article — and how what he found inside Berkshire was unlike any other corporate culture he had ever encountered.

• Charlie Munger had a name for the invisible rot that quietly hollows out great companies. He called it the ABCs of business decay: arrogance, bureaucracy, and complacency. “Others with capital and brains will always be competing to breach your moat and take your customers away,” wrote Weber. “Staying humble, remaining curious, and avoiding complacency are essential — especially following great success.” Success, in other words, is not permission to relax — but rather the time to be more vigilant than ever.

• Then there is the big man himself. Weber described what it’s like to meet with Warren Buffett one-on-one. “The door [to his office] closes and you have Warren’s undivided attention,” he said. “It’s like he has all the time in the world for you.”

• At one point, Weber asked Buffett and vice chairman Greg Abel what information they wanted sent over to track Brooks’s performance. The answer was characteristically minimal. Just the front page of the summary income statement — and whatever else Weber felt worth sharing. No expense reports. No budgets. No other busywork dressed up as accountability.

• That same operating philosophy extended to meetings. Berkshire holds exactly one conglomerate-wide gathering each year for all of its business managers. And Buffett typically raced through it as fast as humanly possible. “The only business meeting of the year for one of the most significant companies in America lasted about ten minutes,” marveled Weber.

• At one annual meeting, the CEOs of three Berkshire furniture subsidiaries were talking amongst themselves — and Buffett made a beeline over to them. “I hope you aren’t talking about synergies,” he said, “because I bought three great companies [and] I don’t want them to become one.”

• And, finally, trust. Which, at Berkshire, is not a feel-good value on a poster — but the entire operating system. “Charlie Munger has often spoken about a ‘seamless web of deserved trust’ as a life pursuit,” wrote Weber, “and Berkshire’s culture reflects that philosophy. As a manager within the company, I can confirm that having [their] trust weighs heavy. Having been given complete trust, I am highly focused on delivering on every level as I alone own all the outcomes.”

(2) April 28 is shaping up to be a big day for Berkshire book fans — with two classic titles getting new editions. First up, Adam Mead fully updated and revised his brilliant Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway with analysis of all the conglomerate’s moves through 2024. The Warren Buffett CEO by Robert Miles will also celebrate its 25th anniversary with a new edition (and plenty of new material). Miles brings the Berkshire story current with profiles of “newer” names like Ted Weschler, Todd Combs, Katie Farmer, and Greg Abel. Can’t wait to read both!

(3) of the All-In Podcast mentioned Buffett over on X in a post about how success often leads to a more complex life. And he was smart to do so — because this is something Buffett figured out long ago. He still lives in the same Omaha house he bought in 1958. Same hobbies. Same diet. Same routines. Buffett simply refused to accept the burdens that come with complexity.

He put it plainly in a 2008 interview with Der Spiegel: “I don’t need 15 houses. Owning real estate doesn’t mean much to me. I don’t like to think about things like that. I don’t need 12 boats — or even the world’s largest boat with a crew of 80. I’d have to take care of them [and] worry about them. I get a lot more fun out of life without all the bells and whistles.”

Most people assume wealth buys freedom. Buffett understands that unchecked accumulation does the opposite — trading your time and mental energy for things you never really needed in the first place.

(4) BNSF Railway CEO Katie Farmer is not backing down. This week, she took her fight against the proposed Union Pacific x Norfolk Southern merger to the American Short Line & Regional Railroad Association’s annual conference — and delivered a pointed message to anyone who thinks consolidation is good for the industry.

“[The combined railroad] would be looking to optimize their network,” warned Farmer, “and that’s not always good for customers and it’s not always good for the short line community.” If the deal clears regulatory hurdles and one railroad controls close to 50% of the nation’s rail volume, shippers may find themselves with fewer alternatives, diminished leverage, and ultimately higher rates.

Farmer also addressed the broader fog of geopolitical uncertainty rattling supply chains, which makes long-range planning feel more like guesswork. “We are living in a time where we have got to be flexible and nimble and agile for our customers,” she said, “because to give our customers the perfect forecast of what’s going to happen [would be impossible].”

(5) A federal judge ruled that Berkshire Hathaway Energy must face a proposed antitrust class action alleging it conspired to inflate real estate commissions paid by home sellers — even though its subsidiary, HomeServices of America, already settled the very same claims for $250 million. BHE had argued that the two entities function as a “single enterprise” when it comes to antitrust liability — meaning that the HomeServices settlement should cover the parent, too. Unfortunately, the judge disagreed and BHE remains in the legal crosshairs.

(6) Occidental Petroleum and Chevron announced an oil discovery at the Bandit prospect about 125 miles off the Louisiana coast. Occidental serves as operator of the joint venture with a 45.375% working interest, while Chevron holds 37.125% and Australian energy company Woodside Energy rounds out the group at 17.5%.

The co-owners are evaluating the results before deciding on the next steps, but the logistical path to production looks promising. It has the potential for subsea tie-backs to an adjacent Occidental-operated facility, which could meaningfully accelerate the timeline (and reduce the cost) of bringing these barrels to market.

“We believe this discovery demonstrates the continued importance of the Gulf of America as a strategic source of reliable domestic oil supply that supports long-term energy security,” said Occidental senior vice president Jeff Simmons.

(7) In other energy news, Chevron also struck a landmark asset swap in Venezuela with state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. that expands its footprint in one of the world’s most resource-rich oil regions. At the center of the deal, Chevron will raise its interest in the Petroindependencia joint venture to 49%, alongside additional rights in the Orinoco Oil Belt. In exchange, it will scale back its stakes in other areas.

This agreement comes hot on the heels of a sweeping reform of the country’s main oil law and the U.S. launch of a $100 billion reconstruction plan for its energy sector.

(8) Coca-Cola will soon become exclusive drink supplier for Marriott International and its nearly 10,000 hotel properties around the world. (Pepsi had held this contract since 1992.) “Marriott’s decision reflects the strength of our brands,” the soft drink giant said in a statement, “and the preference their guests have for our total beverage portfolio.” In an internal communication about the switch, Marriott reportedly noted that Coca-Cola is preferred by more than 70% of the company’s guests.

(9) Exxon Mobil veteran Jeremy Osterstock has replaced Joe Lillo as Pilot CFO. Lillo joined the travel center network alongside CEO Adam Wright in 2023 shortly after Berkshire acquired a controlling interest — and, before that, he worked for Berkshire Hathaway Energy for 25 years. He will stay on as interim controller for the time being, but only until Osterstock — who most recently served as CFO of Exxon Mobil’s Upstream division — settles into his new role.

“Jeremy is known for his focus on developing people, building strong teams, and creating long-term value,” Pilot posted on LinkedIn. “His leadership and passion for working collaboratively and supporting organizations through growth and change will continue to help strengthen Pilot for the future.”

(10) And, finally, additional details on Berkshire’s latest yen-denominated debt sale.

A rare few, though, reimagine things entirely.

They strip the business back to its bones, bet everything on a single conviction, and march off in a direction no one else saw coming. History remembers these figures less as managers — and more as re-founders.

Consider Warren Buffett, who transformed a dying New England textile operation into the greatest capital allocation vehicle of the twentieth century.

The pattern is often the same: a re-founder arrives at a moment of crisis, sees something others have missed, and does what might look foolish from the outside — but proves, in time, to have been the only decision that ever truly made sense.

Jim Weber did just this at Brooks Sports.

And, conveniently, laid out the whole playbook in his memoir, Running with Purpose.

When Weber took over in 2001, Brooks was a brand in name only. It was hemorrhaging cash, buried in debt, and an afterthought to serious runners — outclassed by competitors in every category that mattered. The banks wanted out. Employees were quietly placing bets on how long the new guy would last.

The company had spent years trying to be everything to everyone — and ended up standing for nothing at all.

What followed is one of the great turnaround stories in American business.

Weber didn’t save Brooks by chasing the market. He saved it by abandoning most of it — making a focused, almost radical bet on a narrow lane that Nike, Adidas, and New Balance left wide open.

The results were astounding. A struggling also-ran became a billion-dollar brand — not by doing more, but dramatically less. By saying no to nearly everything, so that each yes actually meant something.

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(1) With global energy markets on edge, the United States has enlisted some of the most powerful names in insurance — Berkshire Hathaway among them — to keep oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation doubled its maritime reinsurance commitment to $40 billion thanks to the new additions. Chubb, a Berkshire investee, serves as lead underwriter: setting pricing and terms, issuing policies, and managing claims.

Berkshire’s involvement, though, carries particular symbolic weight. As the U.S. works to restore confidence in one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes, having the most celebrated insurance operation on the planet in your corner sends a message.

“We are very pleased to support Chubb and DFC on this initiative,” said Berkshire vice chairman Ajit Jain, “and we commend all the reinsurers for stepping up to demonstrate how our industry can help to meet important needs as they arise.”

(2) The Artemis II lunar fly-by is fast becoming the greatest Shot on iPhone ad that Apple never made. NASA cleared the crew to bring iPhone 17s on board — leading to some of the most breathtaking and unexpectedly intimate photographs ever taken in deep space. The images captivated the internet: silhouetted selfies of the astronauts, Earth hanging in the darkness behind them, framed perfectly in Orion’s cabin window.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman pushed things even further, using the 8x telephoto zoom on his iPhone 17 Pro Max to photograph the far side of the moon — and the seldom-seen Chebyshev crater. Apple’s marketing team could not have written a better script. The universe, apparently, did it for them.

(3) Hold on to your hats, but PacifiCorp received a bit of good news this week. The Oregon Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that had allowed wildfire litigation to proceed as a sweeping class action against the Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary. The wildfires were separated by distances of more than 100 miles and the trial judge erred by instructing jurors to “assume that the evidence at trial applies to all class members” when a lot of said evidence applied only to particular fires — and not all of them as a group.

The case now returns to the lower court, which must decide whether a unified class action can still be justified or whether the litigation should now be broken into separate proceedings. That distinction matters enormously: class actions typically lower the cost and complexity for plaintiffs and, without that structure, PacifiCorp would likely face less total liability.

PacifiCorp welcomed the ruling. “PacifiCorp is sensitive to the profound losses experienced by members of our communities,” the utility said in a statement. “There are no winners in wildfire; however, the Court’s decision supports PacifiCorp’s longstanding belief that this process was prejudicial and not appropriate for managing wildfire litigation. The company remains open to resolving reasonable claims and will continue to defend against unsupported claims.”

(4) The U.S. freight rail industry just put up one of its best performances in recent memory. According to the Association of American Railroads, total domestic carloads rose 1.7% to an average of 230,401 in March — the strongest result for that month since 2019. Strip out coal, a commodity in structural decline, and this was actually the busiest March for core freight in nearly two decades.

Let’s hope BNSF Railway was right in the thick of that.

“U.S. freight rail traffic posted some of its strongest readings in years,” the AAR reported, “offering one of the clearest signals yet that the goods economy is regaining its footing. Volumes are not simply rising in one corner of the network; they are firming across agriculture, industrial inputs, chemicals, and intermodal corridors that link U.S. consumers to global supply chains.”

(5) Jordan’s Furniture had a lot riding on Connecticut basketball last weekend. The New England-based member of Berkshire’s furniture quartet had boldly promised 20,000 customers full refunds — estimated at roughly $50 million — if both the UConn men’s and women’s teams advanced to their respective NCAA championship games. (The Lady Huskies lost in the Final Four, ending the high-stakes contest.)

Not that Jordan’s was ever fully exposed. The company purchased an insurance policy — presumably from a Berkshire affiliate — to cover the potential payout. “We want this to happen,” retired president Eliot Tatelman said ahead of the Final Four. “Whether [the UConn teams] win or lose, I’ve got to pay for the insurance.”

Win or lose, though, the promotion did exactly what it was designed to do. In one of Jordan’s newer markets, the stunt generated the kind of publicity that no conventional ad campaign could ever buy. “[The response] was terrific,” Tatelman told The Athletic. “Everybody couldn’t believe what they were hearing. It brought in a lot of people. It’s causing a lot of excitement. Every radio, TV station is calling me. I mean, ESPN wants me to be on one of their shows. This is crazy.”

(6) JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s latest shareholder letter contains a couple of passages that might interest this crowd.

• “Remember the poem ‘If—’ by Rudyard Kipling that begins ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs’? We will stay true to this.” This just so happens to be one of Charlie Munger’s favorite poems — one he often reached for when urging investors to stay rational amid market chaos.

• Dimon also mentioned a certain Omaha-based friend while paying tribute to The American Tailwind. “We operate with a very important silent partner — the U.S. government — noting, as my friend Warren Buffett points out, that his company’s success is predicated upon the extraordinary conditions our country creates. He is right to have said to his shareholders that when they see the American flag, they all should say thank you. We should, too.” 🇺🇸

(7) NetJets members flying into Augusta, Georgia, for this weekend’s Masters Tournament may notice something new taking shape at Augusta Regional Airport. The private aviation leader has broken ground on an exclusive-use terminal — with a private ramp already in place to ensure the kind of efficient, discreet arrivals that its high-powered clientele expects.

“Augusta is a key destination for NetJets owners,” said president Patrick Gallagher. “This new facility reflects our commitment to providing elevated, seamless service for owners, and our investment in making their overall experience memorable.”

Last year, NetJets operated nearly 580 flights in and out of Augusta during Masters week — a 34% jump over 2024. And, this year, it expects that number to climb to around 775. When the terminal is complete, that growing crowd will be greeted by a luxurious lounge, private meeting spaces, and premium amenities.

(8) Tokio Marine leadership feels pretty bullish about its new strategic partnership with Berkshire Hathaway. “To some extent,” said head of corporate planning Kenichi Sakakibara, “we’ve built up our company by studying what Berkshire does.” Vice president Kenji Okada expects the relationship to act as a magnet for like-minded investors. “The addition of the long-term investor Berkshire as a shareholder,” he said, “will attract the interest of investors who want to hold for the long term.”

One unnamed executive offered an even more tantalizing take: “The upper limit on acquisition price [for future M&A activity] has, in effect, vanished.”

And, late last night, Bloomberg broke the news that Berkshire raised ¥272.3 billion ($1.7 billion) through a yen-denominated bond offering — in six tranches with maturities ranging from three to thirty years. The timing is interesting. That figure sits very close to the $1.8 billion Berkshire will pay for its stake in Tokio Marine.

(9) The timeline for Apple’s much-anticipated foldable iPhone got a little murkier this week — with conflicting reports from trustworthy sources about its rumored fall release. Nikkei Asia first claimed that engineering setbacks could delay mass production by a few months, potentially pushing initial shipments into early 2027. But Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman pushed back on that, maintaining that the foldable device will land around the same time as the iPhone 18 Pro as originally planned.

Whatever the timeline, Apple engineers reportedly believe they have cracked some of the foldable format’s most stubborn problems — screen quality, durability, and the dreaded crease that mars rival displays when unfolded. It wouldn’t be the first time Apple arrived fashionably late to a category, only to redefine it.

(10) Elsewhere in the Apple universe, sales of its affordable MacBook Neo have so thoroughly exceeded expectations that Apple may prematurely run out of chips. The Neo was built around a clever bit of supply-chain judo: rather than discarding A18 Pro chips with a single faulty GPU core — which cannot be used in the iPhone 16 Pro — it repurposed them for the Neo instead of throwing them away.

“With MacBook Neo being insanely popular,” wrote in his Culpium newsletter, “the stock of those binned chips will run out before demand gets satisfied.”

“Leaving all that demand on the table is a painful prospect for Apple executives,” he continued, “but going back for another round [of production] would risk killing the sweet profit margins it enjoyed on making a device with ‘effectively free’ chips.”

And one more thing: Ohio Capital Ideas posted an incredible thread over on X about Berkshire’s acquisition record. I thoroughly enjoyed the deep dive into some subs that don’t usually get their moment in the sun. A definite must-read.

The company is of perpetual interest to me — not only for the remarkable loyalty its products command among customers (and the ensuing halo effect that lifts the rest of its catalog), but also because it remains Berkshire Hathaway’s largest stock holding and arguably Warren Buffett’s greatest investment ever.

There is one other reason, too.

Few people can appreciate what Greg Abel is going through right now better than Tim Cook. Both men were handed the daunting task of succeeding a legend — stepping into the enormous shadow of a larger-than-life predecessor whose genius and personality seem impossible to match.

Cook has called Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple and later returned to rescue it from near-collapse, as “a once-in-a-thousand-years type of person”. That same description could certainly be applied, without exaggeration, to Warren Buffett. Each built a business empire so intertwined with his own personal brilliance that the company felt utterly inseparable from the individual himself.

The number of people who successfully filled such enormous shoes is vanishingly small. Cook managed to do so — growing Apple’s market cap from $350 billion to $3.8 trillion in just fourteen years — and now Abel will walk that same tightrope.

With that in mind, I enjoyed Cook’s recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning to commemorate the milestone anniversary. Particularly when he shared the circumstances and challenges of replacing Jobs — and how he followed in the late founder’s footsteps while also charting his own course as CEO.

(1) Honor the legend without getting paralyzed by the past

Tim Cook’s situation before becoming CEO was fairly similar to Greg Abel’s over the past few years. Cook had already run Apple’s day-to-day operations while Steve Jobs battled cancer and was widely seen as the presumptive heir to the throne.

Still, no one knew exactly when the inevitable transition would occur because Jobs (like Buffett) would decide for himself when to retire.

When that day finally arrived — in 2011 — Jobs offered his hand-picked successor a single bit of wisdom. “His advice to me,” said Cook, “was ‘Never ask what I would do. Just do the right thing.’”

“He told me the story behind this [advice]. He was very close to Disney [and] he had watched Disney go through this paralysis of sitting around and talking about what Walt would do. He did not want that for Apple. He wanted a professional transition at CEO — because Apple had never had one before.”

After Walt Disney passed away in 1966 — and following his brother Roy’s death in 1971 (shortly after opening Walt Disney World) — the company stumbled through more than a decade of self-doubt and creative stagnation. Box office receipts suffered and critics panned the studio’s efforts. It took a few close calls with hostile takeovers to shake Disney from its malaise and force it to find its footing.

Jobs understood that, in the fast-moving technology industry, Apple could ill afford a similar detour. And, by freeing Cook in this manner, he set the stage for the iPhone maker’s incredible run to the top of American industry.

“It was such a gift for me,” said Cook, “because it took off of my shoulders this question of ‘What Would Steve Do?’ A lot of other people [still] ask that — although not so much in the company — but I never did. I just put my head down and thought, ‘I’m going to be the best version of myself.’”

Cook also drew a vital distinction between cowering in the shadow of a giant and honoring the enduring principles left behind. “[Steve’s] DNA is deep in this company,” said Cook. “We revere him. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. Not about what he would be doing and second-guessing things, but just the fact that he had such great vision and such great principles that all of this time later it still serves as the guide rails for a company like Apple.”

The principles remain sacrosanct, but their execution belongs to the living.

(2) Different skills for different seasons

It’s probably safe to say that Warren Buffett agrees with Tim Cook being “the best version of [himself]” rather than a pale imitation of Steve Jobs.

In last week’s CNBC interview, Buffett lavished praise on Cook — and how he has played the hand he was dealt better than anyone could have ever imagined.

“He couldn’t have done what Steve Jobs did,” said Buffett, “but Steve Jobs handed him a hand that Steve would not have done as well [with]. Steve picked him, when you get right down to it. Tim is a fantastic manager — and he’s a good guy.”

Jobs was the visionary genius who conjured revolutionary products that redefined entire industries. Cook, by contrast, made his mark as a master operator who tamed global supply chains and scaled manufacturing/distribution resources to turn Apple into the behemoth it is today.

Basically, Steve came up with the killer ideas — and then Cook ensured that they could be produced at the volume and quality needed to realize their full potential. Different strengths for different stages of the company’s evolution.

I suspect Buffett views Berkshire Hathaway in much the same light today. He has handed Greg Abel a company that evolved from (mostly) an investment vehicle into a vast collection of operating businesses — and Abel may be better suited to optimizing those subsidiaries in ways that even Buffett, for all his brilliance in capital allocation, could not.

Time will tell whether that turns out to be true or not.

(3) FOCUS

Apple and Berkshire Hathaway could hardly be more different on the surface. One is sleek, innovative, and often on the cutting edge of technology and consumer desire. The other, a diversified collection of stable, “boring” businesses that prioritize steady progress and certainty over excitement and risk. I mean, while all of us love Berkshire and what it stands for, I don’t think there’s much question that a new iPhone sets people’s hearts racing more than reinsurance policies and BNSF locomotives.

Yet the two companies share one powerful trait.

An intense, almost ruthless focus on the business at hand.

“[Steve Jobs] had an idea of focus that you say no to a thousand things to say yes to the one that’s truly important,” Cook told CBS. “Good isn’t good enough. It has to be insanely great.”

That same discipline defined Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s approach. Buffett is famous for rejecting potential investments within seconds of hearing about them. And Charlie’s own penchant for brusque refusal earned him the affectionate moniker “The Abominable No-Man”.

When biographer Alice Schroeder asked Buffett the secret to his success, his simple answer was “Focus”. He concentrated exclusively on businesses he could understand and, once an idea passed his strict filters, he immersed himself in every last detail.

Berkshire was built — brick by brick — through the power of selective rejection. Saying no to nearly everything so that the rare ideas worthy of a yes could receive the full weight of its attention and capital.

The Oracle looked suitably relaxed in a white turtleneck and V-neck sweater, though he still logs regular hours at Berkshire Hathaway HQ. “Well,” he said, “[my life] is not that much different. I go in every day to the office — [though] I don’t accomplish hardly anything. Greg is so good. It’s kind of embarrassing how good he is.”

“Greg covers more ground in a day than I would in a week,” laughed Buffett, “even when I was at my peak.”

Buffett remains heavily involved in Berkshire’s investment decisions, but with one clear caveat. “I won’t make any [moves] that Greg thinks are wrong,” he said. “If Greg differed with me on anything, we wouldn’t be doing it.”

Just like always, Buffett still calls Mark Millard each morning before the bell to adjust limit prices on Berkshire’s target list. And, in one of the newsier moments of the chat, revealed that he recently made “one tiny purchase” for the conglomerate’s portfolio.

✨ Overall, though, Buffett does not see a whole lot of value in today’s market. When Quick noted that stock prices had dropped substantially, he gently disagreed. “Three times since I’ve taken over Berkshire, it has gone down more than 50%,” he said. “This is nothing. If [stocks] are five or six percent cheaper, that doesn’t [appeal to me]. We aren’t in it to make five or six percent. But we’re not a big seller [right now], either.”

✨ “I sold [Apple] too soon,” admitted Buffett, “but I bought it even sooner — so it worked out.” Even after the sales, Apple remains Berkshire’s #1 stock position. A fact which suits Buffett just fine. “It’s better than any business we own outright.”

“I’m very happy to have it as our largest holding,” he said, “[but] I was not happy to have it be as large as almost everything else combined.” Buffett even added that “it’s not impossible” that Apple could fall to a price where “we would buy a lot [more] of it.”

✨ On the subject of tech regulation, Buffett does not expect any potential action to harm Apple. “I think the consumer is in love with [Apple devices] too much,” he said. “I don’t think Washington will do anything that destroys something that every one of their voters likes.”

✨ Buffett also weighed in on a few current events of interest:

• Iran: “It will be more difficult [to avoid nuclear disaster] if Iran has the bomb than [if] they don’t.”

• Inflation: “I wish [the Federal Reserve] had a zero inflation target. Once you start saying you’re going to tolerate 2%, that compounds pretty dramatically over time. You’re saying to people, ‘If you’re getting less than 2% on your money, you’re going backwards.’ I don’t like that particular goal.”

• Politics: “Now, I’m an independent.”

✨ And, finally, a note for any deep-pocketed readers: Buffett also announced that his famous charity lunch auction will return this year for the first time since 2022. But, this time, co-hosted by NBA star Steph Curry and wife Ayesha Curry. Online bidding begins on May 7 and will run for one week.

More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…

Berkshire Hathaway released its Shareholders Guide for next month’s annual meeting. It includes a short message from new CEO Greg Abel outlining the schedule for the weekend and the format for this year’s Q&A sessions. If you cannot make it out to Omaha for the main event, shareholders can submit their question(s) to moderator Becky Quick at berkshirequestions@cnbc.com. Note: Berkshire will, for the first time, enforce a Clear Bag Policy for all AGM attendees.

Barron’s spoke to Todd Combs about his new role at JPMorgan Chase, where he will lead the bank’s $10 billion Strategic Investment Group. “[We will invest in] everything our country has outsourced and abdicated over recent decades,” he told Andy Serwer. “We want to invest in places where the puck is going so that America can control its own future.” Like defense, re-industrialization, and semiconductors.

When asked why he chose to join Chase, he cited his deep familiarity with the organization — where he has been a director since 2016 — and a desire to make an impact on our nation’s future. “You want to find things in life that are big and important,” said Combs, “that are worth doing and doable.”

Interestingly, he had little to say about his time at Berkshire — other than sounding worn out by the grind of serving as both investment manager and GEICO CEO. “I was back and forth from Omaha to D.C. for six years running GEICO,” said Combs. “That was a long time. I’m very proud — not to go down that rabbit hole — of what we accomplished at GEICO. Berkshire is an animal unto itself that’s completely unique.”

Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane made the media rounds over the past week — speaking with both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal about his decision to pause the company’s planned separation. “The business [simply] wasn’t as strong as it needed to be to have a successful separation,” he told the Times. “It was clearly a better decision to keep it together and fix it, and to start to look for those areas where the scale of what we have is an advantage.”

Cahillane changed his mind on the separation after meeting with employees and hearing horror stories about how 3G Capital cut costs to the bone. “The number of times I heard, ‘I’ve only got one junior person working on this brand. I can’t make a difference that way.’ It was really a cry for resources.” As a result, Kraft Heinz will now invest $600 million to build its brands back up in the consumer’s eye.

“There was a lot of focus on financial engineering and profits and not enough focus on the consumer and reinvesting,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a ‘forever brand’.”

Henrique Braun officially replaced James Quincey as Coca-Cola CEO this week. Quincey, who will remain as chairman, told CNBC that he feels the dawn of artificial intelligence necessitates fresh leadership at the top. “My job is to think who’s the best team to put on the field to get the next wave [of organizational momentum] done,” he said. “I concluded that, actually, it was time for someone else on the field for the next wave of growth.”

“In a pre-gen-AI mode, we made a lot of progress,” continued Quincey, “but now there’s a huge new shift coming along. [Coke needs] someone with the energy to pursue a completely new transformation of the enterprise.”

There’s a lot going on at NetJets these days. The Berkshire-owned private jet company took delivery of its first Bombardier Global 8000 — the world’s fastest civilian jet since the Concorde — which opens up new routes for customers with its ultra-long range. NetJets also signed soccer superstar Lionel Messi as a brand ambassador ahead of this summer’s World Cup. The partnership will include exclusive, invitation-only events for clients and youth soccer clinics.

NetJets president Patrick Gallagher also shared two other pieces of good news. He said that retention rates of current customers are as “high as we’ve ever seen them” and that the company looks to be on pace for another 50,000+ increase in flight hours.

AM Best affirmed superior financial strength and credit ratings for Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies — and shared a few interesting details about the insurance subsidiary. (1) BHHC’s key operating metrics consistently outperform peer benchmarks; (2) it has earned underwriting profits every year for more than a decade; (3) nearly half of BHHC’s direct writings are derived from California — in particular, workers compensation — but that concentration has declined over time; (4) commercial auto and property lines now account for about half of total premiums; and (5) favorable reserve development — a strong indicator of conservative underwriting and disciplined risk management — has consistently boosted earnings for 10+ years.

And, finally, a couple of odds and ends to finish off the week…

• Another yen bond sale could be in the offing.

• This week, Berkshire collected $212 million in quarterly dividends from Coca-Cola, $1.9 million from Lamar Advertising, and $429,000 from Allegion.

Over the course of an hour, Marks walked the crowd through what he considers the foundational elements of intelligent investment. All in all, he discussed the Efficient Market Hypothesis, investor psychology, market cycles, risk vs. reward, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and even his favorite Munger-ism.

As you can see in the photo above, Marks used a whiteboard at various points to illustrate his lessons. But, unfortunately, these notes are not visible in the video — and, anyway, would not translate well to a written transcript. As such, I’ve tried to add context and descriptions where needed.

Howard Marks: I’m going to talk about three aspects of investment theory which I think are absolutely foundational, which most laypeople have never heard about, but which I think are essential to be an intelligent investor.

Three foundational elements [of intelligent investment].

The first is something called the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Basically, what it says is that there are millions of investors and they are — most of them or some of them — intelligent, literate, numerate, objective, rational, computerized, and highly motivated to make money. And their joint efforts cause stocks to be fairly valued.

If there is a stock out there that is undervalued and people read about it, they figure out [it is undervalued], they bid for it in the market, they go out to buy it because it’s a bargain — and their buying causes the price to go up.

If there’s a stock out there and it’s too high, they study it, they realize that it’s too high, and they sell it or sell it short — and their action causes the price to go down.

So the bargains get raised in price, the overpriced securities get underpriced, and eventually the prices converge with something called fair value.

There’s this thing called fair value. [Marks draws graph on whiteboard.] This is dollars [on the y-axis]. I’m not going to tell you what this [on the x-axis] is right now. But securities are priced like this. [Marks points at scattered spots all over the graph.] Some are below fair value and some are above fair value.

When all of these people that I mentioned study the market, they buy the cheap ones and they cause the prices to converge with fair value — and they sell the expensive ones and cause their prices to converge with fair value. So, by the end of this process, it just looks like that [with everything at fair value]. All of the prices, all of the stocks are on this line, the so-called “efficient frontier”.

Now, what’s on this x-axis here is risk.

There’s an assumption, which I’ll talk [about] in the second chapter, that people are risk-averse and because they are risk-averse, if they’re going to make risky investments they have to be tempted with incremental return.

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