In short: Used as the comparison rather than a pick — "You can see Fairfax Financial as a mini Berkshire," and on the 1985-onward return ranking "Berkshire stands at place 49".
In short: Referenced only — as inspiration, not a stance: his first Omaha meeting in May 2006 ("almost a religious-type revelation") pushed him to found RV Capital that August; Buffett hiring Ajit Jain because "I just liked the guy" anchors his manager-first approach.
25:06I liked the people I worked with, but it had the one drawback that I didn't really have any agency. Other people made the investment decisions. My job was to do the analysis to put them in a position where they could do that. And by this time, I'd had a considerable amount of success managing my own money. I had achieved a degree of financial independence by this time.
In short: Raskin and Lebenthal both own and hold it as Buffett steps down as chairman (28:01–30:10). Raskin: "when you have a war for capital, which we have going on right now, Berkshire, which has a lot of capital, should win in the longer term" — the multiple "is actually not very high compared to its own history." Lebenthal: the move fits Buffett's governance standards and frees Greg Abel ("what if Mr. Abel wants to initiate a big dividend?"). Shares up only ~1% this year.
Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman, with his son Howard taking the role and Greg Abel already running the company as CEO. Raskin says Berkshire usually lags in a hot momentum market but shines in downturns, when its huge cash pile lets it buy businesses cheaply. Lebenthal sees the change as good governance: it gives Abel room to make his own decisions, even ones Buffett resisted, like paying a large dividend.
In short: BUY — priced as the A share. Still the weakest arithmetic on the sheet: ER 7.08%, fair value $567,171.5 vs $759,868 (34.0% over), RDCF 22.1% vs 8.5% (−13.6pp).
In short: Context: Lamar is "a former holding of Berkshire Hathaway, if that gives you any sense of … how boring is good."
20:38So, what are your thoughts? — A formal holding of Berkshire Hathaway, if that gives you any sense of boring, how boring is good. It's one of those income type of plays. It is one of the two dominant outdoor advertising franchises. Think about it. It's not like you can just build a new outdoor billboard.
In short: An explicit forward call, argued from the float rather than from the portfolio: "If Berkshire Hathaway would use it's operating profit and float to just copy the S&P 500, by definition it will outperform the index because they have 'free money' to invest in the index. That's exactly why I think Berkshire will keep outperforming going forward." The famous "dumbest stock I ever bought" is re-argued as a good one on the archive's own arithmetic — $14.86 paid against $32.30 of assets (0.46x), and $20.3 per share of cumulative textile operating profit returned over 1965-1974 on $418.5m of revenue and 1,017,547 shares. The float chart runs from ~$26bn in 2000 to ~$175bn at 4Q 2025 (~$124,000 per A share). No valuation, no price, no position — the name is the proof of the mechanism, not a pick.
Berkshire is used here to explain a specific advantage, not as a stock pick. An insurance company collects premiums today and pays claims years later. In between it holds a large pile of other people's money, called "float", and it can invest that money. If the insurance side roughly breaks even, that money is effectively free to borrow.
Slegers' argument is arithmetic: if Berkshire simply put its profits and its float into an index fund, it would still beat the index — because it is investing borrowed money that costs nothing. Berkshire's float has grown from about $26 billion in 2000 to roughly $175 billion at the end of 2025. That is why he says Berkshire should keep outperforming from here.
He also revisits the purchase Buffett calls his worst-ever. Buffett paid $14.86 a share for a dying textile mill whose assets were worth $32.30 a share — less than half of book value. Over the following decade the mill threw off $20.3 a share of operating profit, more than the purchase price. The lesson taken is not that textiles were good, but that buying an entire business cheap enough is hard to lose on, even when the business itself is poor.
In short: Greg Abel on his own company — no valuation view, but two disclosures that matter. Governance: he is the decision maker and Buffett is called on a block of size ("very much consistent with how we manage Berkshire, but also the governance around it"). Operations: data-centre load is "a significant opportunity for Berkshire and Berkshire Hathaway Energy" — Iowa already ~8% of load from data centres — but gated by a four-part test on rates, water and community consent.
Berkshire Hathaway is a conglomerate: it owns whole businesses outright — a railroad, insurers, manufacturers, and the utility group Berkshire Hathaway Energy — and separately holds a large portfolio of shares in other public companies. Greg Abel became chief executive after Warren Buffett; here he is speaking about his own company, so this is not an outside investment view and it carries no valuation or price opinion. It is rated neutral for that reason. What it does give is two disclosures an owner would want.
The first is about how decisions are now made. Buffett said in July that Abel is the decision maker, and Abel does not push back — but he describes calling Buffett before committing to the multi-billion-dollar Alphabet block, "very much consistent with how we manage Berkshire, but also the governance around it." The trigger is the size, not the name: Abel had been adding to Alphabet for months without a call. So the succession is real, with a size threshold above which the two still decide together.
The second is about where the money can go next. Abel spent his career building infrastructure — first at the construction firm Kiewit, then running Berkshire's utilities — and his read on the AI data-centre boom is that of an operator, not a forecaster. Data centres need enormous amounts of electricity, and Berkshire's utilities are among the companies being asked to supply it. In Iowa, roughly 8% of the utility's total electricity load already came from data centres last year, and more is being requested than can currently be served. He calls this "a significant opportunity for Berkshire and Berkshire Hathaway Energy."
But it is a gated opportunity, and the gates are unusual. Before Berkshire will sign up a hyperscaler — one of the giant cloud companies building these sites — the deal has to clear a published set of tests agreed in advance with state governors and regulators: no increase in electricity rates for existing customers (in fact "there has to be a net benefit" to them), a water impact the local community understands, and a community actually willing to host the site. Berkshire cannot force the last one, but it screens for it. So far, the tests have cost nothing: "we have not had any specific site rejected to date," even as local opposition rises across the country. Growth here is real but rationed — by how fast sites can be prepared and connected, not by how much power the company can generate.
5:24We can produce the energy. It's. Do we have a how long it would take to get the sites prepared and being in a position they could serve the data centers. And I continue to see that as a big constraint. Will come to one of the other challenges. So, but we do still see it as a significant opportunity for Berkshire and Berkshire Hathaway Energy in that, for example, if you look at Iowa, where we have a number of data centers, I want to say last year, approximately 8% of our load came from data centers.
In short: Cited as data — Warren Buffett's vehicle in the relayed table. +1.6% YTD 2026, −11.0% versus SPY as of Aug 28, 2026 — the compounder line in a list assembled to show that no discretionary style kept pace with a broad index. Not named in Hay's prose (which singles out Wood, Einhorn, Ackman and Icahn); it appears only in the table image. No view is offered — Hay's own prior Berkshire reference in the archive is the unrelated Jun-19 note on its Macy's stake.
In short: The book's founding anecdote and his benchmark for culture. The woman on the plane "basically made one decision, which is to buy this stock, and just left it alone… she's got a track record that beats most every active manager anywhere on the planet." And on culture: Buffett writing about "don't lose money for the firm, don't lose a shred of reputation, deal with people fairly" is "probably the best example that I've ever seen."
Berkshire is where the whole book started. On a flight to the annual meeting Mayer sat next to a woman who had been one of Buffett's original investors, left the money alone for decades, and ended up wealthy enough to be giving shares to her grandchildren. "She basically made one decision, which is to buy this stock, and just left it alone. And she's got a track record that beats most every active manager anywhere on the planet."
It is also his benchmark for the thing he says matters most after returns on capital: culture. Buffett's letters, read end to end, add up to a coherent code — "don't lose money for the firm, don't lose a shred of reputation, deal with people fairly" — and Mayer treats that as "probably the best example that I've ever seen." His practical test for other companies is whether management talks in those terms at all.
Note what's not here: no valuation view, no comment on Berkshire today. It appears as the proof of concept for buy-and-never-touch, and as the company he uses to demonstrate the date-subscript habit ("Berkshire Hathaway 2025" — my conclusion is a year old, go look again).
22:42can see it, but otherwise hard to detect, but a nice to have. — Buffett did a good job talking about the culture of Berkshire Hathaway while he was there. I think that's probably the best example that I've ever seen. — I don't remember what exactly you said. What do you have in mind? — Just from dealing honestly with people.
In short: BUY — listed on the sheet as the A share (BRK.A). The weakest arithmetic of any large name on the list: fwd PE 23.3 against a 22.5 average, i.e. 3.6% overvalued; the reverse DCF demands 18.1% growth against 8.5% expected (−9.6pp); expected return just 7.08%. Rated Buy anyway — the clearest case in the issue of a rating that the published numbers do not support.
In short: The archetype of his first category, the perpetual holding company — "they go and they buy and make an investment, and they hold it forever." Also the source of his decentralisation rule, via Munger on Buffett: "he outsources it to the point of abdication." Cited as a model, not rated.
4:36Berkshire Hathaway is one of those. But, then you have other ones that are like thematic serial acquirers. Those are companies that you might have heard of like Constellation Software. They keep making acquisitions in exactly the same industry, and they consolidate that industry. And what that does, it means they have expertise in that industry, and they can keep on acquiring them.
In short: Asked whether Greg Abel's $23.5bn of Q2 buying ends the caution: "it's not a big deal for them to spend 23 billion… it's only about 5%, a little over 5% of their cash… I don't think they're crazy bullish or anything. If they were, they'd spend a lot more than 23 billion." He also recalls the 1999 "the guy's washed up" articles — and that from 2000 on, Berkshire proved why you owned it.
Berkshire had been a net seller of shares for fourteen straight quarters, piling up a record ~$397 billion of cash — widely read as Buffett saying stocks were too expensive. In the second quarter under new CEO Greg Abel it bought $23.5 billion and sold only $3.7 billion, ending the streak. The host asks whether that changes the valuation message.
Oakley's answer is to do the division: $23 billion is "only about 5%, a little over 5% of their cash… I don't think they're crazy bullish or anything. If they were, they'd spend a lot more." In other words, judge a signal by its size relative to the capacity behind it, not by the headline number. He adds a reminder that the last time Buffett was written off for not owning the boom — 1999 — the following years showed exactly why you held Berkshire.
15:52much about Mr. Buffett other than in fact I followed him for many years and I will tell you there was so many articles that came out in 1999 that said the guy's washed up because they weren't participating in the high-tech and all that move and they just weren't in that. Well, actually from about 2000 on that showed the reason why you would own Berkshire Hathaway, and to me it's not a big deal for them to spend 23 billion whatever, is only about 5%, a little over 5% of their cash. And that's not a lot. I
In short: Present here as a filer, not a pick. "Berkshire finally put its cash to work, becoming a net buyer of stocks for the first time in 14 quarters" — GOOG/L +83% to its third-largest holding behind Apple and American Express, adds to DAL and LEN, a small DHI open, and STZ exited. The single most-quoted capital-allocation datapoint of the quarter, and the same shift App Economy documented from the Q2 report itself (2026-AUG-15).
Berkshire appears in this article as one of the filers rather than as a stock to buy — but its filing was the quarter's most-discussed. It became a net buyer of stocks for the first time in 14 quarters: Alphabet increased 83% to its third-largest holding, adds to Delta and Lennar, a small new D.R. Horton stake, and Constellation Brands sold out entirely.
Three and a half years of net selling ending is a policy change, not a trade. It says the people running the largest cash pile in corporate America finally found things worth owning — concentrated in one mega-cap platform and in housing.
The neutral framing carries over from App Economy's own coverage of the Q2 report three days earlier: the money moving replaces the question "when will they deploy?" with the harder one — at what return, under a new chief executive.
In short: The comparator, used three ways and not as a recommendation: as the performance benchmark Fairfax is said to have beaten "by a wide margin since 1985"; as the structural template — "just like Berkshire Hathaway they use their float to invest in stocks"; and as the size analogue in the headline question, "like zipping back time 30 years and having the opportunity to buy a smaller Berkshire." The archive's standing coffee-can holding and the analogue used in the 2 August portfolio update; no new view here.
In short: Cash starts moving. Q2 revenue +10% Y/Y to $101.8B with $14.4B of operating profit before tax; manufacturing was the standout (revenue +13%, profit +24%) while insurance was softer (underwriting profit −13%, GEICO underwriting earnings −45%). "The bigger story is the capital allocation under new CEO Greg Abel": Berkshire bought $23B of stocks against just $3B sold — its first quarter as a net buyer of stocks in more than three years — including roughly $10B of Alphabet, repurchased $4.5B of its own stock in Q2 plus an estimated $3.4B more in July, and bought homebuilder Taylor Morrison for $6.8B. Cash fell to $365.5B from ~$397B in Q1 — still enormous, "but the direction has changed." Bottom Line: "The question is no longer when Berkshire will deploy capital. It is whether Abel can earn Buffett-like returns on it."
Berkshire is Warren Buffett's conglomerate — it owns whole businesses (railroads, insurers, manufacturers) and a giant portfolio of stocks. For years its defining feature was a cash pile so large it became a running joke: nearly $400 billion sitting idle because nothing looked cheap enough to buy.
This quarter that changed. Under new CEO Greg Abel, Berkshire bought $23 billion of stocks while selling only $3 billion — its first quarter as a net buyer in over three years — including about $10 billion of Alphabet. It also bought back $4.5 billion of its own shares (and an estimated $3.4 billion more in July) and paid $6.8 billion for homebuilder Taylor Morrison. Cash fell to $365.5 billion. The underlying businesses were mixed: manufacturing profit +24%, but insurance underwriting fell 13% and GEICO's underwriting earnings dropped 45%.
App Economy's framing is the reason this is neutral rather than positive: the money is finally moving, but that only replaces one question with a harder one. "It is whether Abel can earn Buffett-like returns on it" — and that takes years to judge.
In short: Named as the insurance leg of Brown's financials list — "insurance, we talked about Berkshire" — inside the group he calls one of the most important legs of the 2026 bull market, with financials on an eleventh straight weekly gain.
In short: Named twice: in the founder-CEO pattern ("Berkshire Hathaway with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger") and via the compounding rule Munger is quoted for — "the most important rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily." Also the setting for the photograph of the reader meetup in Omaha after the Berkshire AGM. No view.
In short: Up 2% on Saturday's report (bought more stock than it sold; the cash pile declined for the first time since early 2022). Michael Burry posted that Greg Abel lacks Buffett's "patience for the fat pitch" and he does "not find Berkshire an attractive investment going forward." Lebenthal, who owns it: "I respectfully disagree" — strip out the stock holdings and the operating companies (BNSF, Berkshire Energy, Precision Castparts) trade at ~13× forward earnings — "you're getting basically 13 times forward earnings for the US economy," plus the portfolio (the $10B Alphabet secondary, buybacks). "I find this compelling here." Terranova no longer owns it (dropped on momentum near 431) but likes Abel "putting his signature on the company" — buybacks, the ~$7B Taylor Morrison purchase — and argues the Buffett premium has "mostly happened" already. UBS raises to 604 from 585; Cowen and CFRA reiterate hold.
Berkshire reported over the weekend and rose 2%: it bought more stock than it sold, and its famous cash mountain shrank for the first time since early 2022 as new CEO Greg Abel puts money to work. Michael Burry (of "Big Short" fame) publicly argued the opposite side — that his fear about Buffett's successor lacking "patience for the fat pitch" has come true, and Berkshire is no longer attractive.
Jim Lebenthal, who owns it, disagrees with a specific piece of arithmetic. Berkshire is two things bolted together: a portfolio of shares in other companies, and a collection of wholly-owned businesses (the BNSF railroad, Berkshire Energy, Precision Castparts in aerospace). Subtract the market value of the share portfolio from Berkshire's total value, and what's left values those operating businesses at about 13 times next year's profits. Since those businesses are the American economy in miniature, "you're getting basically 13 times forward earnings for the US economy" — plus the share portfolio and buybacks for free. UBS lifted its target to $604; Cowen and CFRA stayed at hold, citing a fading "Buffett premium."
Joe Terranova no longer owns it (he sold near $431 when momentum faded, which he concedes was a poor trade) but likes what Abel is doing: buying back stock, taking a $10 billion Alphabet position, buying homebuilder Taylor Morrison for close to $7 billion. "To make an omelette you have to crack some eggs — I want him to do exactly that, not sit in the chair and live off the reputation." His broader argument is that the Buffett-premium fade has already happened over the fifteen months since the retirement announcement, so today's buyer isn't paying for it either way.
In short: The set-up into Saturday's report. Brown: "the stock has worked this year. I think it's a combination of the stock portfolio — they have Apple, Coca-Cola, American Express, a lot of the stocks that are working in this tape — but also the insurance piece. Insurance stocks we've been highlighting all year: Travelers, Chubb, Allstate, MetLife, one after another. All of those charts look great, so this doesn't look out of place." He also praises the reporting style: "no conference call, drop the news on a Saturday when everyone else is busy. I'm glad they're continuing that tradition." Baruch owns it and has been adding: "the insurance business has been a huge, huge compounder. It's up 5% year to date but actually making new highs right now. We've been leaning into it on weakness, and I like this from a defensive compounder standpoint — there's some upside here for sure." He bought more right after the Alphabet-stake news broke. Brown's closer: "the railroad's on fire, you've got a lot of industrial demand in the current economy, and they own one of the largest collections of utility assets in America. It's almost like everywhere you look, Berkshire is making money… you don't have to invest directly in AI to have benefited from AI."
Ahead of Saturday's report, the desk explains why Berkshire has worked all year. Josh Brown splits it in two: the share portfolio happens to hold Apple, Coca-Cola and American Express — all working in this tape — and the insurance businesses are riding a strong year for the whole group (Travelers, Chubb, Allstate, MetLife, "all of those charts look great"). Add the railroad, which is busy on industrial demand, and one of the largest collections of utility assets in America, and "everywhere you look, Berkshire is making money."
The line that generalises: "you don't have to invest directly in AI to have benefited from AI" — the data-center build-out shows up in freight, in power, and in insurers using AI to cut their own costs.
Bill Baruch owns it as a "defensive compounder" and has been adding on weakness — including right after the news broke that Buffett was behind Berkshire's Alphabet stake. Brown also enjoys the reporting style: no conference call, released on a Saturday when nobody's around.
In short: His index substitute: "Don't buy the S&P. Buy BRKB." ~40% of the market cap is cash, another 25-30% good listed businesses, the rest great wholly-owned ones — "either fairly priced or underpriced, but probably not overpriced." The edge is the dislocation optionality: if one comes, "Greg Abel's going to step up to the bat" and you may be "looking at a double in a few years." He'd keep hoarding the cash, not distribute it.
Pabrai's advice to anyone who would normally just buy an S&P 500 index fund: don't, at these prices — buy Berkshire Hathaway's B shares instead. He thinks the S&P today is "at the worst case not a no-brainer, and more likely ridiculously overvalued," which is a bad starting point for someone putting money in every month for decades.
Berkshire works as a substitute because of what's inside it: roughly 40% of its stock-market value is simply cash, another quarter or so is shares in good listed companies, and the rest is a collection of businesses it owns outright. There's no borrowed money magnifying the risk. On his read that mix is fairly priced or cheap, but almost certainly not expensive.
The part he really wants is the free option on a crash. If markets stay calm, you've taken very little risk. If they break, Greg Abel (Buffett's successor) has an enormous pile of cash to spend at distressed prices — which is why Pabrai also says Berkshire should not pay that cash out to shareholders. A serious dislocation "might wipe out all that cash," and buyers at the bottom are how you "may be looking at a double in a few years."
2:53— I like that. — Basically, when you buy the Berkshire Class B shares, something like 40% of the market cap is cash. Another 25-30% is very good businesses, publicly traded, and then they have a lot of great wholly-owned businesses, etc. And Berkshire may be either fairly priced or underpriced, but probably not overpriced.
In short: Not a holding — the analogue, now with three dated windows. "Berkshire Hathaway is the best investment holding in the world… If you do the same thing as everyone else you'll get the same results as everyone else." 1999: Berkshire -18.9% against the S&P's +23.0%. The past year: +3.5% against +19.5%. Then 2000-2003: +53.7% against -19.2%. "Periods of underperformance are always followed by periods of outperformance. Especially for amazing investors like Warren Buffett. I think we could see something similar in the years to come."
Berkshire is not owned in this portfolio. It appears as the historical argument, and this time with three specific windows rather than a general appeal to Buffett's reputation.
In 1999, at the height of the internet boom, Berkshire fell 18.9% while the index rose 23% — a 42-point gap, and Buffett was widely written off. Over the past year the same pattern is visible in miniature: Berkshire up 3.5%, the index up 19.5%. Then the third window, which is the point: from 2000 to 2003 Berkshire rose 53.7% while the index fell 19.2%.
The claim drawn from it — "periods of underperformance are always followed by periods of outperformance" — is stronger than the evidence supports, and the word "always" is worth noticing. But the structure of the argument is sound, and it is being made alongside live evidence rather than in isolation: the semiconductor ETF fell 20% in mid-July while the index was flat, and quality names held up over the same month.
In short: The benchmark and, unusually for this archive, the thing being argued against. "Investors who bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1985 made life-changing returns. A $5,000 investment back then would be worth more than $8 million today. The problem? Berkshire is now simply too large to repeat those extraordinary returns. Buying Berkshire today is nothing like buying it in 1985." And on geography: "Berkshire is simply too large and focuses solely on the U.S." Note the tension with the 18 June list, which upgraded Berkshire to Buy three weeks earlier, and with the 10 May ETF issue, which proposed it as the S&P 500 alternative.
Berkshire appears here as the thing being compared against and, unusually, argued past. The point is not that it is a bad business but that it is now too big for the arithmetic that made it famous: $5,000 invested in 1985 became more than $8 million, and no company approaching a trillion dollars can repeat that, because the amounts of new profit required are too large to find.
It is worth holding this next to the archive's other positions on the same company within a few weeks: the June rating list upgraded Berkshire to Buy, and the May ETF issue proposed it as the sensible substitute for an S&P 500 index fund. All three can be true — a good place for money, and not a place for thirty per cent a year — but the letters do not reconcile them.
In short: The historical proof of the argument. "From 1998 to 2000, the Nasdaq surged 75%. Over the same period: Berkshire lost 18.9% (underperforming by 93.9%)." Then the resolution: "Just look at what happened after the Dot-com bubble. Both Berkshire Hathaway and Fairfax Financials outperformed the index by a wide margin." Cited to establish that a severe, multi-year style drawdown in a quality manager is a recurring event rather than evidence of a broken process — and, in the preceding July update, as the live proxy for a rotation back into quality.
Berkshire appears in this letter as evidence rather than as a recommendation, and the evidence is uncomfortable on purpose. Between 1998 and 2000, while the Nasdaq rose 75%, Berkshire's shares fell almost 19%. Buffett — by then already the most respected investor alive — spent two years being written about as a man who no longer understood the modern economy. Newspapers said so in print, and Slegers reprints the headlines.
What happened next is why the example is worth keeping. When the technology bubble broke, Berkshire went on to beat the index by a wide margin, and the people who had switched out of it near the bottom of its relative performance took the loss twice — once by leaving, and again by not being there for the recovery.
The point being made is about the shape of quality investing rather than about Berkshire specifically: a strategy built on durable, unexciting businesses will periodically look foolish for years at a stretch, and the moment it looks most foolish is statistically the worst moment to abandon it.
In short: Used as the quality proxy, and read as an early rotation signal. "During speculative market runs like this one, boring, high-quality companies like Berkshire Hathaway often outperform in the years that follow." Berkshire lagged the S&P 500 over the past year, "but if we look at the past month, it looks like we might be starting to see a rotation back into quality." Not a new position — the benchmark he watches to time when the market stops ignoring quality.
Berkshire appears here as an instrument rather than as a purchase — the closest thing to a pure index of "boring, high-quality business" that the market prices daily. When speculation runs hot, Berkshire lags; when it breaks, Berkshire tends to lead for years afterwards.
Slegers uses it as a timing gauge with a light touch. Over the past year it has trailed the S&P 500, consistent with the market ignoring quality. Over the past month it has been ahead, which he reads as a tentative sign that money is starting to rotate back. He does not build a forecast on it; it is offered as the one publicly observable signal that the pattern he expects may be beginning.
In short: Commentary, not a call: ~$1T market cap with ~40% (~$400B) in cash earning ~$14B/yr in T-bill interest. He defends the pile — "he who has the cash makes the terms" — as dry powder for the next dislocation; they won't buy overvalued markets and can only deploy in "multi-tens of billions." The patient-capital tell.
This isn't a buy or sell call — Polomny uses Berkshire as a lesson in patience. Berkshire is sitting on roughly $400 billion in cash (about 40% of the whole company), earning around $14 billion a year just in Treasury-bill interest while it waits. Critics say that's too much idle cash, but Polomny defends it: "he who has the cash makes the terms," so when markets finally crash Berkshire can step in and dictate deals — as it did buying Japanese trading companies at multi-decade lows. Because it's so huge, it can only make deals in the tens of billions, so cash naturally piles up rather than getting spent in an overvalued market. It's his model for holding dry powder and not chasing.
6:18I like to point this out when they come out with the updates. Berkshire's market cap is about a little bit over one trillion and they've got almost 40% of their market cap in cash. They have like $400 billion in cash. It's interesting to see when Buffett was younger, when he was first starting out, he would just go A to Z through the exchange and look for these companies through the Value Line, through all these other tools they used to have back in the day, and look at these reports of these companies and try to find net nets or undervalued situations or hidden assets. And that's a time when he said that he could average 50% a year. But as you get to very large numbers, it's hard to — if you have a portfolio of 300 billion dollars or a trillion dollars, you can't get it to go up 50% a year. You're basically the S&P at that point.
In short: BUY — and still the one rating no published model supports. Quoted on the A shares: FV $384,039.4 against $760,590 = 98.1% overvalued on the earnings model; fwd PE 23.3 vs 22.5 (3.6% over); RDCF 4.4% required vs 3.0% expected. Held from the June upgrade without comment.
In short: Cited in the MicroStrategy takedown — Saylor "tried to instruct Berkshire Hathaway with Warren Buffett" to convert its ~$320B of US treasuries into Bitcoin; since he suggested it, Bitcoin fell 30% — "one of the worst decisions Buffett would ever have made" had he followed the advice.
35:33They are destroying $3 billion a month in capital because they're generating a 3% after tax yield at best and the cost of capital is 15%. So take 12% negative real yield on that. That is the cost. Multiply 325 billion times 12%. That's what the shareholders are paying right now for that.
In short: #1 — "Permanent capital and strong allocation." "Berkshire is the best investment holding company in the world. They use the float from its massive insurance operations to acquire fully owned, high-quality businesses and minority stakes in public equities." Three durability legs: "the whole business is built to survive in any economy"; a culture where "each business runs itself day to day, while big money decisions are made centrally and wisely"; and hard assets — "the BNSF railway and huge utility networks, that will generate cash for generations."
Berkshire is a collection of ordinary businesses — insurance, a railway, electric utilities, manufacturers, shops — plus a large portfolio of shares in other companies, all under one roof. The insurance arm is the engine: customers pay premiums today for claims that may be paid years from now, and in the meantime Berkshire invests that money. It is effectively an interest-free loan that keeps renewing.
It tops a twenty-year locked list for a structural reason rather than an emotional one. If you may not trade for two decades, the best thing you can own is something that trades for you. Berkshire's operating businesses are left alone to run themselves while the capital they generate is reallocated centrally to wherever it earns the most. And underneath the financial machinery sit assets nobody can duplicate — you cannot lay a second BNSF railway across America, or build a competing utility grid.
In short: His answer to "what would you do with $1,000?" — "BRKB… No leverage, lots of cash, very good management, very deep moat, very boring, very hated and unloved." Set it and forget it.
Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffett's company — a huge, cash-rich collection of businesses and stocks with essentially no debt. When asked what a beginner should do with $1,000, Pabrai's answer is Berkshire (ticker BRK.B): "no leverage, lots of cash, very good management, very deep moat, very boring, very hated and unloved."
That "boring" is the whole point. He tells people to get their excitement from life, not the stock market — put savings somewhere dull and durable, add to it every month, and leave it alone for decades so compounding works. Berkshire, like a broad index fund, is a "set it and forget it" home for that money.
43:31— It is a great mustache. — Yeah. But they're going to go by SpaceX. What would you do if you had, let's say, $1,000 and you're just starting, you know, to try to create this wealth? What would you do with 10 uh $1,000? — With $1,000, I would buy Burkshai Hathaway stock. BRKB is the ticker on the New York Stock Exchange.
In short: The second size illustration, and the more uncomfortable one: "Berkshire has nearly quadrupled its revenue in the past 20 years. But the revenue growth rate is slowing down." With Buffett's own 1995 line — "The giant disadvantage we face is size: In the early years, we needed only good ideas, but now we need good big ideas." Upgraded to Buy on the 18 June list a week earlier; the two statements sit awkwardly together.
In short: Cited as a tell, not a pick: "When you see Warren Buffett still sitting on 400 billion in cash, that should tell you what he thinks about the value in the market" — evidence the market is dangerously concentrated in ten stocks.
Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffett's holding company. Schectman doesn't recommend the stock — he uses it as a piece of evidence. Buffett is famous for buying when things are cheap, so when he instead lets cash pile up to a record ~$400 billion, that's a signal he can't find much worth buying. Schectman's point: if the greatest value investor alive is sitting on that much cash while everyone else is "piled into ten stocks," the market is expensive and risky — exactly the backdrop that, when it cracks, sends people back toward hard assets like gold.
54:56So you can't have the entire stratosphere of stock investors piled into 10 stocks without expecting some sort of an issue. When you see Warren Buffett still sitting on 400 billion in cash, that should tell you what he thinks about the value in the market. Okay. All right. And then Michael Oliver. So Michael Oliver has been, I haven't talked to him recently, but you have, has been forecasting that precious metals are going to have an amazing summer. If so, they better get going pretty quickly.
In short: Passing mention — Berkshire Hathaway (now run by Greg Abel) recently bought about 1% of Macy's shares; $55M is "walking around money" for Buffett's flagship, but a "nice vote of confidence" consistent with M's operating turnaround. A data point for the M credit, not a Berkshire call.
In short: Not a pick — used as the bubble's punchline: when Google did its ~$10B bond auction to fund the AI buildout, "who bought $10 billion of the bonds? Berkshire Hathaway." Everybody's on one side of the canoe; even Buffett is in the financing chain.
Berkshire isn't a recommendation here — it's the punchline that proves how all-in the market is on the AI buildout. When Google sold $10 billion of bonds to pay for data centers, the buyer was Berkshire Hathaway. Polomny's image is everyone crowding onto "one side of the canoe": even the most famously disciplined value investor is now financing the very capex bubble he's warning about.
20:29And so the cash flows that they're now getting are not — again, we have this disconnect. Everybody's on one side of the canoe mesmerized by all of this. And the margins are not going to be there. You even have Google going out and borrowing money now to sustain this. With a bond auction. Who bought $10 billion of the bonds? Berkshire Hathaway.
In short: UPGRADED HOLD → BUY — and the one rating the sheet itself contradicts. Quoted on the A shares: FV $370,386.5 against a price of $733,550, i.e. 98.1% overvalued on the earnings-growth model; fwd PE 23.3 vs a 22.5 average (3.6% over); RDCF 7.1% required vs 3.0% expected. The upgrade is not explained in the text, and none of the three published models supports it — read it as a quality/holding-company judgement the spreadsheet cannot express. Also the year's steadiest name: YTD −1.6% against a 13.2% ten-year CAGR.
Berkshire is upgraded from Hold to Buy in this issue, and it is worth being clear that the published numbers do not support the upgrade. The earnings-based model puts fair value at roughly half the traded price; the multiple sits slightly above its own five-year average; and working backwards from the price implies the company needs to grow faster than anyone expects it to.
What is not in the models is the thing Berkshire actually is: a collection of wholly-owned businesses and a very large pile of cash and shares, whose value has little to do with a forward price-to-earnings ratio. The upgrade is a judgement about that, made in the same week the article argues the American index has become a concentrated bet on artificial intelligence. Berkshire is the alternative to that index — which is exactly the case the archive made in May.
In short: Its M&A (with the 10-year back below 4.5%) is what spurred the homebuilder rally that lifted Meritage.
3:09The IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI are up next in the fall. Homebuilders have had a bit of a run of late. As I've said before, homebuilder stocks are always sensitive to interest rates. There is no way to get away from that. The combination of some M&A by Berkshire Hathaway and the 10-year getting back below 4.5% has caused the group to rally.
In short: The proof of the argument, not a pitch. "Since 1962, Berkshire has returned over 5 million percent… a compounded annual return of nearly 20%," about double the S&P 500; $10,000 in 1962 becomes $6m in the index and $3.6bn in Berkshire; "you could erase 99% of Berkshire's returns and still outperform the S&P 500." The load-bearing part is the drawdown: at the 1999 dotcom peak, "Berkshire refused to buy mediocre businesses at unreasonable prices. People were saying Buffett had lost his magic touch" — and $10,000 invested then is "around $400,000 today. A 40-bagger (!)". Stated as the template for what the archive is living through now; no valuation and no buy call here.
Berkshire is used here as the historical evidence for a claim about the present, not as something to buy today. The claim is that buying good businesses at sensible prices works, but works unevenly — and that the uneven stretches are what stop most people from collecting the result.
The long numbers make the first half: since 1962 the shares have returned about 20% a year, roughly twice the American stock market, and $10,000 put in then would be worth about $3.6 billion now against $6 million in the index. The vivid way of putting it is that you could delete ninety-nine per cent of Berkshire's gains and still have beaten the market.
The second half is the part that matters for anyone holding an out-of-favour portfolio in 2026. At the peak of the internet bubble in 1999, Buffett refused to buy technology companies at the prices being asked, the shares fell badly, and newspapers asked whether he had lost his touch. Someone who bought at that exact moment of maximum ridicule made forty times their money and beat the index twice over. The parallel being drawn is explicit: the same thing is happening now to the same kind of business, and the discomfort is the price of the return.
In short: Used as a market-top tell, not a pick: high net equity issuance (S&P market cap) coincides with elevated Berkshire cash, and both cluster "usually around tops." Cash is way up now; "price is what you pay, value is what you get."
This isn't a buy or sell call on Berkshire — it's using Berkshire as a market thermometer. Warren Buffett's company tends to pile up cash when stocks are expensive and he can't find value, and that cash hoard historically peaks "around tops." At the same time, companies issue lots of new stock when prices are high. Right now both are happening — Berkshire's cash is way up and new equity supply (IPOs, SpaceX) is flooding in — which Polomny reads as a classic late-cycle warning: "price is what you pay, value is what you get."
18:28You can see at the prior time that Berkshire had a lot of cash. You can see it coincided around times of issuance of stock as a percentage of the S&P market cap. Usually around tops. Usually around tops. We haven't seen cash is way up. Where is issuance going to go? Well we have a lot of stuff coming to market now.
In short: "Buffett, Berkshire big outperformance the last week" — value companies that own hard-asset businesses are the destination of the colossal growth→value move he sees beginning.
30:17Buffett, Berkshire big outperformance the last week or so from Berkshire. But they own a lot of companies that control hard assets. The Occidental Petroleums of the world right. So value companies, many of them today control oil and gas, natural gas, materials. And so that's a really colossal underowned part of the market. And so if you have 41 trillion on the NASDAQ 100, which a lot of that's growth stocks, and you got these big IPOs and kind of like a massive overdose in the market on technology, when this rotation comes, you're going to see a
In short: Referenced — Berkshire is buying ~$10B of Google, which he cites while explaining he'd still wait for a better Google entry.
10:07It is undervalued based on a price to earnings ratio because Google has traded up to very high PE recently. On a price to free cash flow, it's super expensive. I don't rate this one a buy right now. I think investors should hold on and just wait a bit. Find a more attractive entry point. Now, having said that, there's many investors like Berkshire Hathway that are buying $10 billion worth of Google.
In short: Anchored Alphabet's equity offering with a ~$10B investment, reportedly at a ~6–8% discount — the marquee buyer that helped clear the raise.
Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffett's conglomerate, famous for sitting on a mountain of cash and buying into businesses it likes. Here it played the role of the big, trusted buyer: it put in about $10 billion of Alphabet's $85 billion share sale — reportedly getting the stock at roughly a 6–8% discount to the market price. Having a marquee, deep-pocketed name anchor the deal helps reassure other buyers and gets the whole offering sold.
In short: Took $10B of Google's raise — "I have no idea" why, but flagged as a notable buyer stepping in.
3:09THERE'S NOT THAT MUCH DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHATGPT. IT'S VERY COMMODITIZED. PEOPLE ARE SWITCHING CONSTANTLY FROM ONE TO THE OTHER. THERE ARE NO MOATS. SO FOR ALL THE MONEY THAT'S BEING SPENT, WHAT'S BEING CREATED, IT SEEMS TO ME AT THIS POINT IS A COMMODITY. — SO WHY DO YOU THINK BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY STEPPED IN AND TOOK $10 BILLION OF THAT? GOOGLE? — I HAVE NO IDEA.
In short: Present twice as a yardstick, not a pick. First through director Tracy Britt Cool — "11 years at Berkshire Hathaway, of which 5 years were at the headquarters", where "only about 20 people work". Second, and more pointedly, as the compensation benchmark: after setting out Perimeter's founders' fee, the write-up shows Buffett's own pay from the Berkshire 2025 proxy and remarks that "it's a bit disappointing to see someone who worked alongside Buffett for five years engage in this kind of compensation." The Coca-Cola quote supplies the moat framing.
In short: The issue's central recommendation, framed as an index substitute: "today, I think it's a way safer bet to buy Berkshire Hathaway instead of the index." Five reasons listed — better diversified with "no large exposure to AI such as the S&P 500"; a huge cash pile, "one third of the portfolio = cash"; the ability to invest the float; "one of the best capital allocators in the world"; and a valuation "way cheaper than the one of the S&P 500". The mechanism is spelled out: using free float to buy the index would outperform the index "by definition". The timing argument: underperformance of 40% versus the index since Greg Abel's appointment was announced — "This has nothing to do with Greg Abel. It has everything to do with Mr. Market who is a Manic-Depressive. The last time Berkshire underperformed this much? 1999." Long-run record: $10,000 in 1962 → $3.8bn, against $6m for the S&P 500. The concession made: outperformance will be lower than in past decades "due to the law of large numbers".
The argument here is that Berkshire is a better version of an index fund, and the reason is insurance.
An insurer takes your premium today and pays your claim years later. In between it holds a large pile of your money. That pile is called float. If the insurance business roughly breaks even on its own, the float costs nothing — it is other people's money, invested for free. The worked example given: you pay $1,500 a year for car cover, and the average driver claims $8,000 to $10,000 once every 17 or 18 years. Everything in between gets invested.
From that comes the sharpest claim in the piece: if Berkshire simply bought the S&P 500 with its profits and its float, it would beat the S&P 500 — because it is buying the index with money it did not have to raise.
Four other reasons are given for preferring it to the index right now. It has almost no exposure to the artificial-intelligence companies that dominate the index. A third of the portfolio is cash, ready to spend when prices fall. It is run by exceptional capital allocators. And it is much cheaper than the index.
The timing argument is that the shares have lagged the index by 40% since Greg Abel was named the next chief executive — blamed on sentiment, not on Abel — and that the last comparable lag was 1999, after which Berkshire beat the market for years.
The one caveat given honestly: the company is now so large that future outperformance will be smaller than in the past.
In short: Scale reference, not a stance: Micron's parabolic rally "briefly replaced Berkshire Hathaway as the largest constituent in the Russell 1000 Value index" — used to convey how extreme the memory move became.
In short: Present as the historical setting rather than as a pick: in the 1970s Berkshire "consisted of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger… and Rick Guerin", and the Guerin story is used to isolate leverage and impatience as the only difference between them. Markel is then framed as "a mini Berkshire" — the insurance-float model applied at smaller scale. The full Berkshire case arrives a week later, on 19 May.
In short: Proposed as an S&P 500 replacement, and argued on the index's own four merits. Diversification: "ownership in 26 public companies through its stock portfolio… more than 60 private companies that are fully owned" — BNSF, Dairy Queen, Clayton Homes, GEICO, NetJets, Duracell, Fruit of the Loom — plus insurance and Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Cost: "while the fees to own an S&P 500 ETF are very low, there are no management fees to own Berkshire Hathaway stock." Winners run: "his favorite holding period is forever" — Coca-Cola since 1988, See's Candies since 1972. Record: "over the long-term, Berkshire Hathaway has performed significantly better than the S&P 500." Three additional advantages over the index: it is "not one big bet on AI… they own a lot of companies that are hard for AI to disrupt"; more than $300bn of cash "to deploy when attractive opportunities arise"; and capital allocated by Greg Abel, "the man Warren Buffett picked himself", who "thinks Berkshire Hathaway is undervalued, as he started buying back the stock." The valuation: "Christopher Bloomstran estimates Berkshire Hathaway B shares to be worth between $560 and $580 in his most recent letter (current stock price: $475)" — a 18-22% discount.
The starting point is a warning about the S&P 500. The ten largest companies are now nearly 40% of it, against a 140-year average of 24% — and, more importantly, eight of those ten are tied to the same thing, artificial intelligence. That has not been true before. In the 1960s the biggest companies were IBM, Coca-Cola, Xerox and Polaroid, which had little to do with each other; even in 2000 the top ten included Walmart, Exxon and Citigroup. So an investor holding an index fund today is far less spread out than they think.
The arithmetic behind the AI spending is the second worry. The big cloud companies are expected to spend $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year. To earn a normal 10% return on that they would need $70 billion of profit, which at typical margins means $700 billion of revenue. All AI revenue in 2025 was about $40 billion. The gap does not prove the spending is wasted, but it shows how much has to go right.
Third, the price. The Shiller ratio — which compares prices to ten years of inflation-adjusted profits, to smooth out one-off years — is above 40, close to where it stood before the dot-com crash.
So the suggestion is Berkshire Hathaway instead, argued on exactly the four things people like about the index. Diversification: it owns stakes in 26 listed companies and outright owns more than 60 businesses, from the BNSF railway and GEICO to Dairy Queen and Duracell, plus a very large insurer and a utility. Cost: an index fund charges a small annual fee; owning Berkshire shares costs nothing at all. Letting winners run: Buffett has held Coca-Cola since 1988 and See's Candies since 1972. And a long-run record better than the index.
Three things it adds that an index cannot. Most of what it owns — railways, power, homebuilding — is hard for AI to disrupt. It holds more than $300 billion in cash, so a crash is an opportunity rather than a loss. And Greg Abel, whom Buffett chose, is buying back the shares, which is management saying they are cheap. The investor Christopher Bloomstran puts the B shares at $560-580 against a market price of $475.
In short: The occasion and the comparator. "As this will be the first AGM since Warren Buffett 'retired', the big question is how Berkshire Hathaway will evolve from here. I don't think there is a next Berkshire Hathaway out there. However, there are some companies that come close" — the setup for the Fairfax section. No stance. The AGM itself supplies the material for the 7 May and 10 May issues.
In short: The template, not a recommendation: "In essence, Fairfax copied the business model of Berkshire Hathaway" — premiums collected upfront, float invested before claims are paid. No view expressed here.
In short: Named twice, both times as a reference rather than a pick: as Markel's largest equity position at 12.8%, and as the analogue in "Markel is often seen as a mini Berkshire Hathaway." The archive's #1 coffee-can name; no stance is taken in this post.
In short: The precedent, used for the third time this month. "$10.000 in 1962 → S&P 500: $6 million; Berkshire Hathaway: $3.6 billion… you could take away 99% (!) of Buffett's returns and he would still have outperformed the market." Then 1999: "Berkshire Hathaway was down 19.9% while the S&P 500 increased by 21%… lagged the index by 40% (!)," followed by the dot-com bust. No view on Berkshire itself.
In short: The other benchmark in the opening: "$1,000 → $3,400" over ten years, the lowest of the three serial acquirers compared. No view on Berkshire; it is there to establish that TransDigm belongs in the conversation at all — "a company often forgotten on that list."
In short: The historical control, not a pick. "$10.000 in 1962 → S&P 500: $6 million; Berkshire Hathaway: $3.6 billion… You could take away 99% of Berkshire Hathaway's return and you'd still have outperformed the index." Then the counterweight: "In 1999, Berkshire Hathaway was down 19.9% while the S&P 500 increased by 21%… lacked the index by 40% (!)" — immediately before the dot-com bust.
In short: ROS short candidate — "#1 on the list was provocative… if you didn't know this chart was Berkshire." The provocation: "Buffett isn't there anymore, gang" — the name's technical roll-over vs a departed key man.
Berkshire was the single biggest name on Paulo's "rolling over" screen — its chart has flattened onto its 200-day trend line. He knows it's provocative to flag Warren Buffett's company as a short, but his point is blunt: the technicals look tired, and "Buffett isn't there anymore" — the legendary investor who was the reason many owned it has stepped back, removing the key reason to pay a premium. A candidate to short if it breaks down, on chart and key-man grounds, not a claim the businesses are broken.
In short: Reference / confirmation: Berkshire bought Google in Q3 as it made new all-time highs — a "smart money" tell contrasted with SoftBank ("Masaponzi") selling NVDA to buy OpenAI. "These are not the same."
In short: The set-and-forget alternative to an S&P 500 index fund for someone who never wants to think about investing: "it's like an index… set it and forget it." Pairs with the real levers — save hard, long runway. (S&P itself "somewhat overheated right now," but fine dollar-cost-averaged over a long horizon.)
Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffett's holding company — a giant, cash-rich collection of businesses and stocks. Pabrai's advice for a normal person who doesn't want to study investing is simple: put money in a broad index fund (which just owns the 500 biggest US companies) and never touch it. Berkshire, he says, is a fine alternative to that index — "it's like an index… set it and forget it."
The real drivers of a good outcome, he stresses, aren't stock picks — they're saving hard, starting young, and leaving the money alone for decades so compounding can work. He notes the S&P 500 itself looks "somewhat overheated" right now, but says that doesn't matter much if your time horizon is long and you add money steadily.
1:02:00But I think if you have a long enough to time horizon and your dollar cost averaging in, it's perfectly okay. What you could also do as an alternative is buy Birkshire Hathaway. So that's a stock BRKB. So you could again tell these people that just put it into Burkshire Hathaway. It's like an index. And again, it's like set it and forget it.
In short: Referenced as history: Tweedy Browne (where he audited in the mid-'70s) is where Buffett bought the bulk of his Berkshire shares, per Buffett's 1984 "Super Investors of Graham-and-Doddsville" essay. Also the source of the railroad "terrible business becomes good business" analogy.
13:10this is the place where Buffett bought the bulk of his shares in Berkshire Hathaway. He wrote about the company in his famous essay from 1984, "Super Investors of Graham-and-Doddsville." So these guys were real stars, but this was at a time when no one really wanted to do value investing. They were mainly looking at these tiny stocks on the pink sheets and the like. Can you give us a sense of the opportunity that existed where you started to see — oh, if you actually look at small companies and
In short: The #1 pick, and deliberately the most boring one: "Good investing is like watching paint dry and that's exactly why Berkshire Hathaway is the top pick." The best investment conglomerate that has ever existed, one of the best company cultures in the world, a relentless focus on shareholder value — and it "will continue to do well" even after Buffett.
Berkshire is a conglomerate: a parent company that wholly owns dozens of ordinary businesses (insurance, a railroad, utilities, retailers) and also holds a large portfolio of shares in other public companies. Its insurance arms collect premiums today and pay claims years later, and that pool of other people's money — "float" — is invested in the meantime, which is a cheap and permanent source of investing capital.
Slegers puts it at number one for the least glamorous reason available: it is boring, and boring is the point. "Good investing is like watching paint dry." His 50-year case rests on culture and structure rather than any current product — a company built to allocate capital sensibly, with a shareholder-first ethos that he expects to outlive Warren Buffett himself.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.