Buffett remains active at 96, but Berkshire's shares aren't doing much — CNBC

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

Warren Buffett will be celebrating his 96th birthday on Sunday.

Even though he is no longer Berkshire Hathaway's CEO, he remains very involved as chairman, apparently continuing to make the big decisions on equities , including the addition in recent quarters of what is now a $36.6 billion stake in Google parent Alphabet .

Berkshire investors, however, will not be celebrating the performance of the company's stock.

After rallying in the wake of its Q2 earnings report to an intraday high of $537.74 on Aug. 10, its best level since its record high close just before Buffett's May 2025 announcement he would be stepping down as CEO , the Class B stock has fallen back to close Friday at $505.00, up just 0.5% year to date.

That puts it 12.2 percentage points behind the benchmark S&P 500 , which is up 12.7% on the year.

While acknowledging it's "hard to say" why Berkshire's stock is lagging, Barron's lists of number of possible explanations, including uncertainty over Greg Abel as CEO, disappointment he hasn't been more aggressively reducing the company's still large cash position, Berkshire's continuing refusal to pay a dividend, and its failure to make a giant acquisition of $100 billion or more.

Berkshire Hathaway is one of the many stocks being frequently bought and sold for President Donald Trump's investment portfolio.

Of the 1,051 transactions listed in his disclosure form covering the month of June for the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, five involve Berkshire's stock.

Four of them specify Berkshire's Class B shares , while one just lists Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

There were three purchases and two sales.

The disclosure form only lists a range for each transaction, not a specific amount, so we can only look at a range of totals.

Thanks to the June 18 purchase between $1 million and $5 million, Trump was a net buyer for the month.

In Trump's 2025 annual report, he reports holding between $1 million and $5 million worth of Berkshire shares.

After reviewing thousands of trades in earlier disclosures, Bloomberg reported the "patterns bear the hallmarks of overlapping portfolio-management strategies, often index-based and much of it likely automated, and all of it difficult to disentangle."

It says that's largely in line with the Trump Organization's public statements that third-party financial institutions independently manage the trading using "automated, model-based portfolios and direct indexing strategies" with no input from the president or his family.

Critics argue the president, along with top administration officials and members of Congress, should not be allowed to own individual stocks so they can avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Without specifying President Trump's controversial tariffs, Warren Buffett argues the U.S. "should be looking to trade with the rest of the world."

BECKY QUICK : This first question comes from Bill Mitchell. I received more questions about this than any other question.

He writes, "Warren, in a 2003 Fortune article you argued for import certificates to limit trade deficits and said these import certificates basically amounted to a tariff. But recently, you called tariffs an act of economic war.

"Has your view on trade barriers changed? Or do you see import certificates as somehow distinct from tariffs?"

WARREN BUFFETT : Yeah, well, the import certificates were distinct, but their goal is to balance imports against exports. And so that the trade deficit would not grow in an enormous way.

In fact, it would've — and it had various other provisions in it to help third world countries — at that time, as they were called — to perhaps catch up a little bit.

And they had a variety of aspects to them. But basically, they were designed to balance trade.

And I think you can make some very good arguments for the fact that balanced trade is good for the world. And the more balanced trade there is, the better.

It will continue to be better for cocoa to be raised in Ghana, and coffee in Colombia, and a few things...

We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world, and we should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best...

And the United States — the United States — we've won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing 250 years ago. There's nothing that's been anything like it.

And it's a big mistake, in my view, when you have seven and a half billion people that don't like you very well, and you've got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they've done.

And I don't think it's right, and I don't think it's wise.

I do think that the more — the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes — it won't be at our expense — the more prosperous we'll become and will then — the safer we'll feel, and your children will feel someday. So that's — (Applause)

But don't expect my import certificate idea to go down there with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or anything. (Laughter)

Berkshire market capitalization: $1,081,295,529,555

Berkshire Cash as of June 30: $365.5 billion (Down 8.0% from March 31)

Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $359.2 billion (Down 3.8% from March 31)

Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion of its shares in Q2 2026.

Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices.

Holdings are as of June 30, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on Aug.14, 2026, except for:

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker .

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at [email protected] . (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

Also, Buffett's annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire's website .

-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch

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Buffett remains active at 96, but Berkshire's shares aren't doing much — CNBC | AIPROPX