Warren Buffett's 'Last Call' Delivers 40% — Greg Abel Faces A Tough Act To Follow

Warren Buffett placed his final bet and that Alphabet investment has returned roughly 40% in six months, even as Berkshire Hathaway shares lag the S&P 500 under new CEO Greg Abel.

The first Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting since Warren Buffett’s departure witnessed everything from AI discussions to future efforts to grow the company. But Buffett’s parting gift to investors couldn’t go unnoticed. His last major stock call before leaving Berkshire Hathaway is proving prophetic. His final tech bet on Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has returned approximately 40 per cent in roughly six months.

The timing puts his successor, Greg Abel, in the spotlight. Abel inherited not just a $1.02 trillion conglomerate built across six decades, but also a high-conviction wager that is now one of the best-performing large-cap positions in the country.

Buffett’s Casino Warning And The Market He Left Behind

Buffett did not go quietly. Before stepping back, he delivered a sharp warning about the state of financial markets, comparing to a church with a casino attached. His remark was directed at the speculative culture, which had taken hold of Wall Street, where short-term trading made genuine value harder to find and easier to lose, CNBC reported.

‘People can move between the church and the casino, and I would say there are more people in the church [than] people in the casino, but the casino has gotten very attractive,’ he said. ‘If you’re buying one-day options or selling them, that’s not investing, it’s not speculating – it’s gambling.’

‘We’ve never had people in a more gambling mood than now,’ Buffet added.

For decades, Buffett’s annual letters to Berkshire shareholders were treated as moral compass for American investing by retail investors and fund managers alike. His casino framing was consistent with a long-held view: that speculative enthusiasm keeps assets overpriced and makes disciplined capital deployment nearly impossible.

Buffett told investors the 2026 market dip had not been steep enough to justify major deployment, saying that only a significant decline would prompt him to put large sums to work, according to Barchart. That signal, in the final weeks of his tenure, set the terms for how Abel will be judged: deploy too soon, and critics will say he abandoned Buffett’s discipline; hold too long, and shareholders will ask why a $397 billion pile sits earning Treasury yields while the S&P 500 continues to climb.

Buffett’s Alphabet position cuts against any narrative that he simply ran out of ideas. His bet made a roughly 40 per cent return in six months, which is a reminder that the instinct that built Berkshire over 60 years did not dull in its final chapter. His last major public message before stepping away warned that speculation was distorting markets. In the months since, those same markets have validated at least one of his final investment convictions, even as Berkshire’s own shares have lagged behind.

Greg Abel’s AI Pivot And Challenge Of $397 Billion Cash Pile

At the meeting, Abel addressed the billion-dollar question: what happens to the cash? Berkshire’s cash reserves had swelled to a record $397 billion after 14 consecutive quarters of net stock sales, according to Bloomberg.

Abel also broke with the Buffett playbook in one notable respect. He stressed the importance of artificial intelligence at the annual meeting, signaling his willingness towards technology-driven investment that Buffett had long resisted before his late-career pivot into Apple and, more recently, Alphabet. Whether Abel’s stated interest in AI translates into actual capital allocation is a question that analysts and long-term shareholders are watching closely.

The financial backdrop for his debut was strong. Berkshire’s first-quarter profit more than doubled, according to CBS News, driven in part by investment gains and the company’s vast insurance operations. However, Berkshire Hathaway shares are down 12 per cent since Buffett’s retirement announcement, even as the S&P 500 has climbed 25 per cent over the same period.