Berkshire Hathaway turned into a net buyer of stocks in the second quarter for the first time since 2022, after 13 straight quarters as a net seller under Warren Buffett. New CEO Greg Abel added $17 billion of Alphabet and cut the company's Bank of America stake, even as Buffett continues to call the market overvalued.
Berkshire Hathaway was a net buyer of stocks in the second quarter for the first time since 2022, under new CEO Greg Abel. The shift comes even though Warren Buffett has said for years that he thinks the market is overvalued, including in a May CNBC interview where he compared market behavior to a casino.
Before Buffett stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025, Berkshire had gone 13 straight quarters as a net seller of stocks, building up cash instead. The company ended 2025 with $373.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and Treasury bills, more than a third of its market cap.
Abel adds $17 billion of Alphabet
Abel replaced the 95-year-old Buffett at the start of the year, moving over from running Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Under his watch, the conglomerate made a $17 billion purchase of Alphabet in the quarter, a stock Buffett had long admired but didn't begin buying until Q3 2025, by which point it was already worth around $4 trillion.
Berkshire's other top buys were all cyclical names: Delta Air Lines at $1.64 billion, Lennar at $273 million, and Macy's at $101 million. Each carries a different thesis. Alphabet is riding growth in its cloud business, Delta is benefiting from the ongoing travel boom, Lennar is positioned for a housing-market turnaround, and Macy's may have evolved into more of a real estate play, though it stays sensitive to consumer spending.
Bank of America and Capital One take the biggest cuts
On the sell side, Berkshire's largest reductions were concentrated in financials. It cut its Bank of America stake by $1.7 billion and sold $830 million of Capital One Financial. Other notable sales included Kroger for $610 million, Nucor for $456 million, and Davita for $272 million.
Kroger and Davita are defensive holdings Berkshire would typically hold if it were bracing for a downturn, which makes their sale notable alongside the buying spree elsewhere.
One quarter of activity isn't enough to establish a pattern, but it suggests Abel may be departing from Berkshire's traditional value-investing playbook, even as some of his buys still fit a value thesis based on valuation and history. Buffett himself had initiated the Alphabet position before handing over the reins, so the moves aren't a full break from his approach. Investors can watch what Berkshire and other large funds are doing for insight, but many such bets turn out to be mistakes, and individual investors shouldn't follow fund managers blindly.
Source: The Motley Fool
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