Warren Buffett's Successor, Greg Abel, Just Spent $23.5 Billion on Stocks, the First Time in More Than 3 Years Berkshire Hathaway Was a Net Buyer

Berkshire Hathaway still has a $366 billion stockpile, but it's down from its record high.

The company reported strong operating earnings for the second quarter.

Greg Abel already demonstrated that he's making his mark on holding company Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) in the 2026 first quarter, his first as chief executive officer. Warren Buffett's protege and handpicked successor trimmed the company's equity portfolio from 45 to 29 positions, following through on his commitment to invest in a smaller group of high-conviction stocks. Otherwise, his new positions in Macy's and Delta Air Lines were much in line with the company's typical criteria for investments, and the continued investments in Alphabet were still Buffett's play.

However, in the second quarter, he's already shown the decisiveness that Buffett has praised in the past. Whereas Berkshire Hathaway beefed up its cash stockpile to reach a high of nearly $400 billion by the end of the first quarter, and it was the company's 14th consecutive quarter of being a net seller of stocks, Abel made a break in the second quarter. Berkshire bought $23.5 billion worth of equities in the quarter and sold only $3.7 billion, making it a net buyer of $19.8 billion.

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The S&P 500 has gained 73% during the past three years that Berkshire has been building its record cash stockpile, but that doesn't mean the company has been missing out. After all, it has an equity portfolio worth $355 billion as of this writing. Its own stock has underperformed, up only about 50% during the past three years.

In the second quarter, Berkshire Hathaway reported robust performance, with a 16.3% increase in operating earnings, Buffett's preferred bottom-line metric. Net income more than doubled, from $12.4 billion to $25.7 billion, but Buffett has cautioned in the past that this number includes unrealized gains and losses, and therefore it's not as reliable as operating earnings. That's in line with the broader market's gains in the quarter. Operating earnings come from the entire Berkshire Hathaway enterprise, including the nearly 200 businesses it owns either entirely or partially, not just its equities. Investing income was healthy, though, with $12.7 billion in gains.

Investors already know about a $10 billion investment in Alphabet in June, accounting for about half of the buying activity in the quarter. The remainder of the trades will be disclosed in the company's 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission sometime in the next few days.