The Berkshire Beat: June 19, 2026
All of the latest Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway news!
CNBC’s Becky Quick is usually the one asking the questions.
But, this week, she found herself on the other side of the microphone when she appeared on The Master Investor Podcast to discuss her career in financial journalism and two-decade run as Warren Buffett’s go-to interviewer and media confidante.
“What you see is what you get [with him],” said Quick. “He is authentic. He means it.”
Asked to name the real source of Buffett’s genius, she pointed to his patience. “He and Charlie have repeatedly said that one of the things they’re best at doing is nothing. There are a lot of people who feel like they have to act because the markets are going up and up. Warren has never had FOMO, that fear of missing out on things.”
That patience, she explained, is not altogether passive. It’s backed by a sharp grasp of compound interest, deep mathematical and actuarial instincts, and rare pattern recognition built over decades of reading annual reports and financial filings.
“He has built up an unbelievable knowledge base,” she said, “and he’s got basically a photographic memory. And having a calm, cool head and not getting caught up in the irrationality of markets at times — I think those are the combination of factors.”
It all started with a gutsy, off-the-cuff move. Nearly twenty years ago, Quick called Buffett about an unrelated matter and learned he was about to leave on a trip to China.
On a whim, she asked to tag along.
“He paused for what felt to me like five minutes,” she said, “[although] he swears it was only three to five seconds. But [it felt like] this eternity when you ask someone, ‘Can I come with you?’ and then you wait to see what they have to say. Finally, he said, ‘Well, I guess so.’”
And it was on their shared flight to China that the pair became fast friends. They ended up talking for hours, trading sections of the newspaper, and building a bedrock of trust and friendship that remains in place to this day.
“I talk to him multiple times every week,” she said.
More news and notes from the Berkshire Hathaway orbit…
A NetJets plane crashed along a Texas highway on Tuesday evening after the pilots reported mechanical issues and attempted an emergency diversion. One passenger (Capital Factory CEO Joshua Baer) was killed, while bystanders and first responders helped five others escape the burning wreckage. This marks the first fatal crash in the private jet company’s six-plus decades of service.
Becoming Katharine Graham — the film Warren Buffett called “a remarkable story of American history” — made its broadcast debut on PBS this week. Teddy Kunhardt, one of the directors, told WTTW that the project traces back to an earlier film his family made about Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. “[Buffett] called us and said, ‘I just want to let you guys know I love the film. I think it’s great, but you missed the mark.’ It was like an awkward silence and my father said, ‘What do you mean?’ And Warren said, ‘You only briefly touched on Katharine Graham. She was the key to the success of Ben Bradlee and The Washington Post.’”
CEO Tim Cook just confirmed what many Apple fans feared — prices are going up. In a Wall Street Journal interview, he called the price hikes “unavoidable” — explaining that Apple absorbed soaring memory and storage chip costs for as long as it could “but the situation has become unsustainable”.
As regular readers of this newsletter well know, Berkshire invested $10 billion in Alphabet as part of the tech giant’s recent $85 billion capital raise. Kevin Gee, in a memo he circulated among financial friends, makes the case that Alphabet is — in his words — “Berkshire Hathaway 2.0”.
Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena hit back against claims that his proposed Norfolk Southern merger would choke off competition. Speaking in London this week, he pointed to BNSF Railway as proof the western United States would remain plenty contested. “We are competing against Berkshire-owned BNSF,” he said. “Last time I looked, they’re a $1 trillion company with $400 billion in the bank.”
In other BNSF news, the railroad’s 2025 Impact Report confirmed it to be the safest year in company history. Injury frequency dropped 7% and rail equipment incidents fell 13%. All while BNSF launched a new coast-to-coast intermodal service with CSX, reduced dwell time by 13% to historic lows, and handled record volumes of 1.6 million total lifts at critical Southern California ports.
Tokio Marine CEO Masahiro Koike told Nikkei Asia that the strategic partnership with Berkshire opens the door to acquisitions in international markets like Canada and Australia that “we couldn’t bring into our group alone”. As the insurance market softens, Koike expects some owners to grow less attached to underwriters that no longer throw off quite as much cash as they once did — creating a window to buy low and capture the upswing when conditions improve in the future.
In her Master Investor Podcast interview, Becky Quick also touched on last week’s much-discussed SpaceX IPO — with a Berkshire twist. “If you [had] bet against Elon Musk in the past,” she said, “you could have lost your shirt, your pants, your shoes, and everything else along the way. This is something Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have both told me individually. They might not buy the stock, but they would never bet against Elon Musk — because it is a pretty risky proposition to do so.”
Coca-Cola still reigns atop the soda game. Last year, it sold the most carbonated soft drinks in 36 of the 41 metro markets tracked by Beverage Digest.
Lubrizol CEO Rebecca Liebert spoke to Bloomberg as her company opened a new CPVC resin manufacturing facility in India — part of a broader push to double its revenue there over the next five years. The interview also doubled as a reminder of just how big a role Lubrizol’s chemistry plays in our daily lives. “You’ve probably used our products many times already today,” she said, “in the shampoo that you used to wash your hair, the lotions on your face, the medicines you took, your running shoes — and, obviously, your car.”