Buffett Won't Be Center Stage at Berkshire's Annual Meeting—But His Latest Stock Moves Still Will Be

Key Takeaways

• Warren Buffett won’t headline the audience Q&As at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, leaving them to new CEO Greg Abel.

• Last month in a CNBC interview, Buffett revealed a more hands-on post-retirement role than many expected.

• The new investment Buffett teased in the same interview likely won’t surface until Securities and Exchange Commission filings due May 15.

For the first time in six decades, Warren Buffett won’t be center stage for Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.A, BRK.B) annual meeting. His recent stock moves could still dominate investor discussions this Saturday.

The 95-year-old stepped down as CEO at the start of this year, handing the role to Greg Abel. But Buffett surprised many last month by revealing in a CNBC interview that he’s still steering many of the company’s investment decisions.

Buffett also said he’s made “one tiny purchase” that he declined to name.

Why This Matters to You

Berkshire is among the largest U.S. companies by market capitalization, and Buffett’s moves have long guided investors to the value stocks to be found in the market.

At Saturday’s meeting, Buffett will sit on the arena floor with the rest of the board while Abel handles two shareholder Q&A sessions for the first time—one with Ajit Jain, vice chair of insurance operations, and the second with BNSF Railway CEO Katie Farmer and NetJets CEO Adam Johnson.

While Buffett has handed over the microphone, the routine he described in a late-March interview, along with other recent Berkshire moves, suggests the Oracle of Omaha still manages much of Berkshire’s portfolio. He told CNBC he goes to the office every day and calls Mark Millard, Berkshire’s director of financial assets, each morning before before the market opens, reacting to premarket activity and adjusting limit orders. Millard keeps him updated hourly with a sheet of the day’s trades.

Abel sees the trades later and has the final word. “I won’t make any that Greg thinks are wrong,” Buffett said.

Before stepping down, Buffett ran about 90% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio, with Todd Combs and Ted Weschler splitting the rest. Combs left for JPMorgan Chase (JPM) in December. Abel now formally oversees 94% of it, with Weschler handling the other 6%.

Berkshire doesn’t say who directed specific trades, but analysts work from a rule of thumb: bigger, value-oriented positions are Buffett’s; smaller and tech-leaning ones come from Abel and Weschler.

By that read, the trades widely attributed to Buffett in his final quarter as CEO fit his long-standing taste for durable cash-flow businesses at prices he can defend: 3 million more shares of Chubb (CB), a Chevron (CVX) position raised to 130 million shares, and a $352 million stake in the New York Times Company (NYT). So, too, does the list of businesses Abel said in his annual shareholder letter in February would continue as long-term investments for the company: Apple (AAPL), American Express (AXP), Coca-Cola (KO) and Moody’s (MCO).

Berkshire’s moves this year also fit with him weighing in on the big calls. In March, National Indemnity, Berkshire’s reinsurance subsidiary, took a $1.8 billion stake in Japanese insurer Tokio Marine Holdings (with rights to grow the position to about 10%), deepening Buffett’s longstanding exposure to major Japanese firms.

Berkshire has also continued to add to the massive cash pile Buffett built in recent years. The company ended 2025 with more than $373 billion in cash and Treasury bills, and Buffett told CNBC the company bought another $17 billion in T-bills in late March. Some of that record-setting cash pile was used in March for Berkshire’s first share buyback in nearly two years—a $226 million repurchase that could signal Buffett sees Berkshire’s shares as undervalued.

Saturday will give shareholders more information, as investors get their first sustained look at Abel running a Buffett-style Q&A. More revealing may be Berkshire’s first-quarter 13F filing May 15, which could shed light on how much Buffett is guiding the company’s trades.

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