(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every Friday night.)
Berkshire stock soars as Wall Street swoons over AI concerns
Berkshire Hathaway stock soared. S&P500 index Concerns that big spending on data centers won’t pay off has prompted investors this week to move money out of struggling tech stocks and into the relative safety of traditional conglomerates with relatively little exposure to artificial intelligence.
A month ago, Berkshire stock was widely favored. B stock Its performance for the year was 13.6 percentage points below the S&P.
Thanks to three more all-time high closes this week, Berkshire now beats the benchmark by 5.8 percentage points.
Berkshire more than doubled its share buybacks to $9.6 billion last quarter, while operating income fell slightly, the company announced Saturday.
Berkshire is up more than 5% this week, while the S&P is down about 2.7%.
Two weeks ago, Berkshire’s stock price completely erased the roughly 15% drop it suffered in the three months following Warren Buffett’s surprise announcement at the company’s 2025 shareholder meeting that he would step down as CEO at the end of the year.
It is currently up 6% from its all-time high closing on the Friday before Buffett’s May 3, 2025 revelation.
Alphabet slide cited as an example of ‘unfortunate’ stock selection
Bloomberg suggests that “Berkshire’s sudden foray into AI may seem ill-timed as cracks in the AI trade begin to show.”
As of June 30, this position had a market value of $37.8 billion, making it the third-largest holding in Berkshire’s portfolio.
Since then, both the Class A and Class C shares have fallen about 20%, and the stock’s value now lags at $30.2 billion. coca cola’s Ranked 4th in the portfolio with $38.3 billion.
(We’ll find out in just over a week whether Berkshire made any changes to Alphabet’s position during the third quarter that ended Sept. 30.)
Bloomberg quoted CFRA research analyst Kathy Seifert as saying, “I think part of this may be a conscious decision to increase their exposure. But you have to wonder, is it a little bit late?”
But the article notes that “such concerns may not matter much to serious value investors or longtime Berkshire observers,” and Keefe, Brouillette & Woods analyst Meyer Shields said Abel sees the AI bet as a long-term bet on the technology’s potential, perhaps in line with “the conservatism you would expect from Berkshire Hathaway.”
Drone footage of the Google Storey County Campus data center at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center in Sparks, Nevada, on October 9, 2026. Spending on AI data centers by hyperscalers is fueling a rise in debt issuance in the tech sector.
Daniel Cole | Reuters
But Andrew Barry writes in Barron’s that he estimates Alphabet’s $3 billion loss is part of an “unfortunate” long-term trend in Berkshire’s stock selection.
Despite “the S&P 500 index returning 150% since the end of 2019, and tech stocks quadrupling,” “the company has not generated significant value from its stock picks over the past decade.”
Berkshire has invested in five Japanese trading companies. chevronand Chub Although it has fared well, “there have been many losers and mediocre investments that have simply been withdrawn.”
He said: verizon, HP, Paramount (currently Skydance), general motors, constellation brandand pool.
He estimates Berkshire’s stock price, western oil Although the amount invested is about 20% higher than the amount paid, OXY is “far behind most energy stocks” due to the strong rise in oil prices this year.
Mr. Barry also lists stocks whose prices continue to rise even after Berkshire sheds them. apple He is the worst criminal.
The stake has been reduced by 75% since 2023, and Barry calculates the average selling price to be about $200 per share, well below AAPL’s current price of $342.
Despite these sales, Apple remains Berkshire’s largest holding, with a market capitalization of $78 billion. The stock is up 1,200% since Berkshire started buying in early 2016, and many at the time thought Berkshire’s best days had already come.
Mr. Barry believes Mr. Abel will likely maintain Berkshire’s core equity investments, but may now focus more on his strengths, such as improving Berkshire’s operating companies and making new acquisitions.
His conclusion: “Barring a market crash, stock investing may no longer be central to Berkshire.
“And even if Berkshire’s new holdings are revealed soon, it might not be a good idea to buy them. The record isn’t that good.”
Contribute to the rise in SiriusXM stock with a small purchase
Berkshire Hathaway discloses a relatively small addition of $27 million to $4.1 billion SiriusXM The position added fuel to an ongoing rally that pushed the satellite radio company’s stock to a 52-week high this week.
Last Thursday morning, SiriusXM reported a 14% increase in third-quarter free cash flow and 5,000 self-pay subscriber additions, and raised its full-year 2026 financial outlook.
Shares closed the day at $28.67, up 4.9%.
Berkshire bought more than 924,000 shares on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday at an average price of $29.10, and the stock continued to rise, closing at $30.80 on Tuesday.
Berkshire disclosed the purchase late Tuesday night, which appeared to fuel an additional 8.4% rally on Wednesday when the stock closed at $33.40.
It hit a 52-week intraday high of $33.76 on Thursday, but closed at $32.40 on Friday.
Overall, Sirius XM is up 18.6% since its earnings release and is up 62.0% so far this year.
This is the first addition to Berkshire stock since late July or early August last year.
A total of 7.3 million shares were purchased in 2025 at an average price of $21.86.
The position is likely to be one of portfolio manager Ted Weschler’s stocks.
Berkshire utility calls for 57% rate hike in Northern California
Pacific Power, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway’s PacifiCorp, is asking California regulators for a 57% rate increase that would increase the average household electric bill by $120 a month.
The Wall Street Journal called this “an astonishing request even in an era of rising electricity prices.”
The utility says the increase will be partially offset by a 14% reduction that will take effect from January 1.
Much of the $103 million the increase would generate has already been spent on efforts to make power infrastructure in sparsely populated and heavily forested areas more resilient to wildfires.
The company faces claims of approximately $637 million for the 2020 and 2022 fires.
Reuters reports that the Oregon Supreme Court this week heard arguments on whether to reinstate a jury verdict that could expose PacifiCorp to “tens of billions of dollars in potential damages for its role in four wildfires in Oregon in 2020.”
Buffett and Berkshire on the Internet
Some links may require a subscription.
CNBC’s Buffett Archive Highlights
Work in the era of artificial intelligence (2017)
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Thomas Kimey (PH) is here. He is a 27-year-old shareholder from Kentfield, California.
Let me preface this question by saying that he came here 17 years ago, when he was 10 years old, and he asked a question from the audience about whether the Internet could hurt some of Berkshire’s investments.
At the time, you said you wanted to see how things played out. He has now updated the question. (Buffett laughs)
“Beyond autonomous driving and GEICO that we’ve already talked about, what do you think about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on Berkshire’s business?”
Warren Buffett: I certainly don’t have any special insight into artificial intelligence, but I think a lot will happen in that space over the next few decades, and probably even less.
I certainly think they should be in charge, but again, I’m not contributing much to this party. But I certainly think there will be significant job losses in certain regions.
But it’s good for society.
It may not be good for your particular business, but let’s take it to an extreme.
Let’s assume that one person can press a button and basically create all the output that we can get in this country through different machines and robotics and all sorts of things.
That is, everyone has as much accomplishment as we have. It’s all done by one person, not 150 million people employed.
Is the world getting better as we know it?
Well, it’s true that we’re going to be working a lot less hours per week, and so on.
I mean, that’s a good thing, but it’s going to require big changes in all aspects of how people interact and what they expect from government. And of course, the reality is that more than one person will continue to work.
But you would certainly think that pushing this idea that way is one of the results of major advances in artificial intelligence.
And it ends up being very pro-social. It’s very destructive in other ways as well. And we may have big problems in terms of democracy and how to respond to it…
Charlie Munger: Well, you paint a very interesting world where everyone is engaged in trade. And the deal is I’ll give you golf lessons and you’ll dye my hair. It would be a world like the Kuwaiti royal family or something.
And I don’t think it’s good for America to have everything produced by one person and the rest of us just engaged in leisure.
berkshire stock watch
BRK.A stock price: $856,612.00
BRK.B stock price: $570.89
BRK.BP/E (TTM): 14.35
Berkshire Market Capitalization: $1,222,245,324,463
Berkshire Cash as of June 30: $365.5 billion (down 8.0% from March 31)
Net of railroad cash and national taxes paid: $359.2 billion (down 3.8% from March 31)
Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion of its own stock in the second quarter of 2026.
Berkshire’s Top Stock Holdings – November 6, 2026
Berkshire’s top U.S. and Japanese listed stocks by market capitalization, based on the latest closing prices.
Holdings are as of June 30, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s August 14, 2026 13F filing. However, the following cases are excluded.
A complete list of holdings and current market value is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
Question or comment
If you have any questions or comments about the newsletter, please send them to alex.crippen@cnbc.com. (Sorry, we do not forward questions or comments to Mr. Buffett himself.)
If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can sign up here.
I also highly recommend Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. It’s collected here on Berkshire’s website.
— Alex Crippen, Warren Buffett Watch Editor
