r/BerkshireHathaway

Hi All,

Over the past 5 years, I've tried to be the sensible one in the room by buying BRK B while all my peers were buying Nvidia and the likes. I've 50% of my portfolio in Brk. I've been very confident for a long time that it was the right move. But recently it's been killing me. I feel silly. I have 5% return over years from my brk b investments. It feels like at this point that there is very little that can happen, even long term, than can validate my hypothesis and my belief in this company.

Can anyone give me rational reasons as to why I should hold or why what I did was the smart move? Thanks.

The S&P is questioning whether or not it should change the rules on adding a business to the index in order to accommodate IPO’s of SpaceX, Open AI, Anthropic and others.

Current rules to enter the index dictate that a company must be domiciled in the U.S., have a market capitalization of at least $22.7 billion, be publicly listed for 12 months. Positive financial earnings in the most recent quarter, and the sum of the trailing four quarters must also be positive, At least 50% of the company's outstanding shares must be available for public trading. Annual dollar value traded divided by the float-adjusted market capitalization should be 1 or greater, and a minimum of 250,000 shares must trade in each of the six months prior to evaluation.

These rules essentially protect the average American with their retirement accounts in passively managed index funds from getting scammed.

Essentially the S&P is mulling over whether or not Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others should be able detonate everyone’s retirement accounts by forcing them into the indices right away forcing passively managed funds to buy their IPO at terrible valuations and causing a huge destabilization.

This might be one of the reasons that Berkshire is holding nearly 400 billion in treasuries. When the S&P index blows up and valuations crash they will go shopping.

Any thoughts are appreciated this is probably the biggest threat financially speaking to the average American and nobody is talking about it.

How do the accounting rules associated with owning more than 20% impact the Q1 earnings report.

I think the impact is two fold.

1. Oxidental petroleum appreciated by about 40% and that had no effect on investment income because of their large stake.
2. Kraft Heinz and Oxidental petroleum both had great quarters so this should show up favorably on the next earnings report regardless of price action.

I had great respect for Warren and Charlie, so I always considered Berkshire a core holding in any of my portfolios. Charlie is obviously gone and Warren no longer in charge - that's sad, but I do have faith in Abel. In fact, I think Abel being in charge now will result in Berkshire dipping it's toes into more tech related stocks etc and therefore potentially greater returns.

I get the share price went down when Warren left. But its just so flat all the time, its either flat or goes down. The record pile of cash will stop being a benefit soon and more of a drag if it hasn't already. I'm not sure when they will ever spend it at this rate.

Berkshire to me is a defensive asset to hedge against my other holdings mainly, but I would like it to perform well in the long run too. I'm just finding it hard to keep holding and buying it, when I could be putting that money into AI, semis etc and making nice profits.

I don't want people to say, just sell and go. I just want some advice on how to continue holding and buying this when its frankly so boring.

What if in two years they still have not invested any significant amount?

I just lump summed $100k into Berkshire.

Average price $479 per share.

I’m planning to hold this forever and I’m 30 years old. My FIRE calculations have a 5% real return rate baked in - am I being realistic?

Ama

SpaceX and OpenAI likely to IPO at a larger valuation than Berkshire, despite differences in revenue.

"Deutsche Bank analyst Adrian Cox pointed out in a Thursday note that Berkshire Hathaway had over $350 billion in revenue last year. That compares to SpaceX's $18.67 billion in revenues during 2025. OpenAI reportedly generated $13.1 billion of revenue last year."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/spacex-openai-valuations-would-mean-they-leapfrog-berkshire-hathaway-on-first-day-of-trading/ar-AA23LtKV?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

Being honest I agree 100% with the fantastic business portion but I disagree with the opinion that you must buy at a fair price. In fact I think that you can pay almost any price for that fantastic business and it will work out if you hold long enough.

When I turned 18 I evaluated fantastic businesses I thought had true staying power per Charlie and Warrens wisdom. I paid arguably terrible prices at the time on Costco, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and Berkshire shares in 2011. Those holdings have all eclipsed the return of the S&P 500 by a crazy amount over the years since. If you would have asked me at the time I would have freaked out if one of those shares jumped up 5$ the day before I bought or dumped 5$ the day after. Now I realize I could have paid double or triple and still made out like a bandit, it didn’t matter what I paid at the time but the enduring strength of the overall business.

 I got incredibly lucky over the years picking those six and there were no Costco warehouses in my area growing up but always remembered Charlie spouting the virtues of the business and how great their model was. After I researched Costco I pulled the trigger on the stock despite having never experienced shopping there in person and only knowing affluent friends who used to shop there, a very risky play in my opinion. 15 years later it is the only place my family and I shop in person now for clothes, groceries and household items. I still use my iPhone everyday and do work on a Windows OS, I use Amazon for things I can’t find at Costco and Google search 100 things a day. Unfortunately I don’t use any Berkshire products or services often as I find them to be way too expensive with an exception in Dairy Queen, I love the peanut buster parfait.

In 2022 Berkshire held 60.1 million shares of TSM (about $5 billion at the time). If he hadn’t panicked and dumped them those shares would be worth $24 billion. I understand his desire to be conservative but I’d like to see them take some risks. In my opinion companies like TSM should have fallen into that hold forever category.

Title.

That is all.

https://disclosure2dl.edinet-fsa.go.jp/searchdocument/pdf/S100Y4U6.pdf?sv=2020-08-04&st=2026-05-19T10%3A45%3A29Z&se=2031-05-19T15%3A00%3A00Z&sr=b&sp=rl&sig=FnGGL6uy4ce%2BHRuq7gOoELmDB3O2eGHu1GeLf4iq24A%3D

BRK's share count of Sumitomo rose by 9.5% (from 112,459,500 to 123,129,300) compared to the last disclosure filing (as of 03/10/2025) and shares outstanding dropped by 1.3% (from 1,211,099,367 to 1,195,115,184)

(I used my phone camera and a translation app to read this in English.)

https://www.theinsurer.com/ti/news/exclusive-usli-president-and-cuo-mitala-resigns-after-nearly-three-decades-at-2026-05-19/

The resignation may have caused today's price action.

Looks like they are already up approx 8B on their google investment. Hopefully they kept on buying more after the reporting date. Thats sizable!

Has anyone listened to the recent The Investors Podcast featuring Mohnish Pabrai? Pabrai himself a successful investor was pretty candid in his remarks about many Berkshire things. From Buffett and Munger to Abel and more.

I thought the following line by Pabrai was quite telling in how Abel might run Berkshire compared to how Buffett has:

"...Greg got a nice middle ground in the sense that he’s not overbearing in your face, etc. but at the same time, if he clearly sees that a manager is not delivering, not the right person, etc., he is going to act on that. And so I think we are going to be seeing a kind of tighter operations. Most of the acquisitions Warren did did not work well for Berkshire.

Buffett famously said he doesn't count it until the cash is in hand. By that standard most of the Magnificent 7 are in trouble.

I published SEC data on this May 4th. The Economist confirmed it May 13th with Goldman sources. Here's its fascinating take: https://www.economist.com/business/2026/05/13/big-tech-is-sacrificing-its-cashflows-to-prop-up-the-ai-boom

The number: net income grew $157B across 43 big tech companies in 2025. True free cash flow — operating cash flow minus CapEx minus SBC — shrank $10B.

The one exception that passes Buffett's test: Nvidia. True FCF went from $2.9B to $56B in two years. They built the tollbooth everyone else is paying.

The Economist found something my data missed: $820B in off-balance-sheet lease commitments on data centers not yet built. A banker told them lawyers found "a very long list" of exit ramps in those contracts. That's the hidden blast radius if the AI buildout slows.

My money is in BRK.B, EPD, CB, AXP. Pretty boring, but I can live with that.

Full piece here: https://cavemanscreener.substack.com/p/bridges-to-nowhere-part-ii-the-economist