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Berkshire Recovers From Buffett's Retirement Faster Than Buffett Did


After almost 18 months, Berkshire Hathaway shares have entirely erased all the ground they lost in the wake of Warren Buffett's surprise announcement at the 2025 shareholders meeting that he would step down as CEO.

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Berkshire Recovers From Buffett's Retirement Faster Than Buffett Did

Berkshire Hathaway stock hit a record. Class A closed Thursday at $820,500. Class B closed at $546.97.

Eighteen months ago, Warren Buffett told the Omaha faithful he was stepping down. The stock fell more than 14% in three months. Analysts called it the dissolving of the "Buffett premium." Retail traders called it a buying opportunity, then sold.

Now Greg Abel runs the place. He is 64. He resumed buybacks. He bought Taylor Morrison Home. He backed Alphabet's AI spending. Berkshire's cash pile sits around $360 billion, earning interest at current rates.

That is the whole strategy. Park a mountain of money in Treasury bills and let the checks arrive. Abel is a CEO the way a mailbox is a postal worker.

Consider the Berkshire bear. He read "Buffett steps down" and heard "company dies." He shorted a business that owns railroads, insurers, and a candy company. Who bets against See's Candies? Nobody has ever been sad in a See's store.

Technical analysis has a term for this move. The term is "up." Price went down, price went up, price is now higher than before it went down. I own seventeen indicators and none of them predicted the hand-wringing was pointless. They also did not predict lunch.

Berkshire climbed while AI stocks sold off. The market spent two years paying a thousand times earnings for chatbots. It is now running to a company whose most exciting product is insurance float.

Buffett is 96. He is reportedly fine. He watched the stock drop on his retirement and recover on his absence. Some people get a gold watch. Warren got a vote of confidence in the form of nobody needing him.

To everyone who sold in August 2025: Buffett's successor made you look foolish, and the man himself was not even in the room.

Photo by on Unsplash

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