{"id":599831,"date":"2026-08-29T17:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T17:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/599831\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T17:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T17:12:14","slug":"buffett-remains-active-at-96-but-berkshires-shares-arent-doing-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/599831\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffett remains active at 96, but Berkshire’s shares aren’t doing much"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here<\/a> to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)<\/p>\n

Buffett remains active at 96, but Berkshire’s shares aren’t doing muchZoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

That puts it 12.2 percentage points behind the benchmark\u00a0S&P 500<\/a>, which is up 12.7% on the year.<\/p>\n

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

While acknowledging it’s “hard to say” why Berkshire’s stock is lagging,\u00a0Barron’s\u00a0lists<\/a>\u00a0of 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.<\/p>\n

President Trump’s portfolio actively trades Berkshire shares<\/p>\n

Berkshire Hathaway is one of the many stocks being frequently bought and sold for President Donald Trump’s investment portfolio.<\/p>\n

Of the 1,051 transactions<\/a>\u00a0listed in his disclosure form<\/a> covering the month of June for the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, five involve Berkshire’s stock.<\/p>\n

Four of them specify Berkshire’s\u00a0Class B shares<\/a>, while one just lists Berkshire Hathaway Inc.<\/p>\n

There were three purchases and two sales.<\/p>\n

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

The disclosure form only lists a range for each transaction, not a specific amount, so we can only look at a range of totals.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the June 18 purchase between $1 million and $5 million, Trump was a net buyer for the month.<\/p>\n

In Trump’s 2025 annual report, he reports holding between $1 million and $5 million worth of Berkshire shares.<\/p>\n

A specialist trader works at his post on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange, Jan. 21, 2026.<\/p>\n

Brendan McDermid | Reuters<\/p>\n

After reviewing thousands of trades in earlier disclosures,\u00a0Bloomberg\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0the “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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET<\/p>\n

Some links may require a subscription:<\/p>\n

HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC’S BUFFETT ARCHIVE‘Trade should not be a weapon’ (2025)<\/p>\n

Without specifying President Trump’s controversial tariffs,\u00a0Warren Buffett argues<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. “should be looking to trade with the rest of the world.”<\/p>\n

\"'Trade<\/p>\n

BECKY QUICK: This first question comes from Bill Mitchell. I received more questions about this than any other question.<\/p>\n

He writes, “Warren, in a\u00a02003 Fortune article<\/a>\u00a0you 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.<\/p>\n

“Has your view on trade barriers changed? Or do you see import certificates as somehow distinct from tariffs?”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In fact, it would’ve \u2014 and it had various other provisions in it to help third world countries \u2014 at that time, as they were called \u2014 to perhaps catch up a little bit.<\/p>\n

And they had a variety of aspects to them. But basically, they were designed to balance trade.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It will continue to be better for cocoa to be raised in Ghana, and coffee in Colombia, and a few things…<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

Trade should not be a weapon.<\/p>\n

And the United States \u2014 the United States \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And I don’t think it’s right, and I don’t think it’s wise.<\/p>\n

I do think that the more \u2014 the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes \u2014 it won’t be at our expense \u2014 the more prosperous we’ll become and will then \u2014 the safer we’ll feel, and your children will feel someday. So that’s \u2014 (Applause)<\/p>\n

But don’t expect my import certificate idea to go down there with\u00a0Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations<\/a>\u00a0or anything. (Laughter)<\/p>\n

\u200a<\/p>\n

BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCHZoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsZoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

BRK.A stock price: $757,985.01<\/p>\n

BRK.B stock price: $505.00<\/p>\n

BRK.B P\/E (TTM): 12.70<\/p>\n

Berkshire market capitalization: $1,081,295,529,555<\/p>\n

Berkshire Cash as of June 30: $365.5 billion (Down 8.0% from March 31)<\/p>\n

Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $359.2 billion (Down 3.8% from March 31)<\/p>\n

Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion of its shares in Q2 2026.<\/p>\n

BERKSHIRE’S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS – Aug. 28, 2026Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

Berkshire’s top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices.<\/p>\n

Holdings are as of June 30, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing<\/a> on Aug.14, 2026, except for:<\/p>\n

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com’s\u00a0Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS<\/p>\n

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at\u00a0alex.crippen@cnbc.com<\/a>. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)<\/p>\n

If you aren’t already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected\u00a0here on Berkshire’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch<\/p>\n

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1684,39311,941,114,357,85,46,190,168471,1032,14409],"class_list":["post-599831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alphabet-class-a","tag-berkshire-hathaway-inc","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-markets","tag-mitsubishi-ufj-financial-group-inc","tag-united-states","tag-warren-buffett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}