Berkshire Hathaway Announces Leadership Appointments [pdf]

Posted by kamaraju 1 day ago

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Comments

Comment by nabla9 1 day ago

Todd Combs leaving is the biggest news, but expected.

Everybody always talks about Buffet and late Charlie Munger, but they also knew how to hire talents like Todd Combs and Ted Weschler.

Comment by jll29 1 day ago

[Admittedly off-topic, but relevant to the readers of the post]

Since this post is about financial investments, equity trading and M&A activities, I wonder is anyone shorting AI stocks to profit from the current bubble? I would be interested on people's stance (yes/no/why), and which instruments they use (if yes).

Comment by cmcaleer 1 day ago

Being short anything AI now seems like shotgun tasting unless you really want to give Citadel and Jane Street money since the options premiums are so high, but I have been trying to get a bit less exposed to tech over the last few months and just been buying other ETFs that are less exposed to tech.

Comment by thekid314 1 day ago

I’m curious to know which you believe is overvalued. Is it the model creators, who are essentially producing a commoditized product that will never generate the current inflated values? Or is it the individuals who build useful tools that are only incrementally better than previous solutions? Or is it the companies that are attempting to develop groundbreaking products, but they are perpetually six months to two years away from delivery?

Comment by missedthecue 1 day ago

Jamie Dimon is lining up his successor

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Comment by itsthecourier 1 day ago

Seems like they're splitting the responsibilities even more, Buffet will step down as CEO in this year's end.

He has been a role model in many areas of my life and it hurts to see how his best friends and wife died already. would have loved seen Charlie reach 100 years old age.

Visited Buffet's home in Omaha and accepted a well lived life can be one following your own set of values, specially when they do not conform to the normal.

I know more about Buffet and Munger lifes than my own grandparents whom died relatively young in my childhood. Cannot explain how anything related to Charlie and Warren had hit me, I think they really feel like close wise elders in my spirit

Comment by mtgentry 1 day ago

In a world of Chamaths, be a Buffet

Comment by aanet 1 day ago

Lucky you to have visited Buffet's house!

I "visited" Buffet's house about a decade ago or so when I drove from Chicago to the Bay Area to move there.

"Visited" is rather generous - I went by it, saw some security, took some selfies and pics, and paid my respects at the Steakhouse :) Now I wish I had sought an opportunity to visit him in person.

Anyhow... BRKB has been in my portfolio for 20+ years. (Now dwarfed by other Tech equity)

Comment by Mistletoe 1 day ago

How did you visit his home?

Comment by gordonzhu 1 day ago

Just a guess, but Buffett would often host undergrad and grad students at his home.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/warren-buffett-hosts-15-whar...

Comment by calmbonsai 1 day ago

FWIW, in 2015 I happened to be in Omaha and I made a point to try and at least "see" it. It's just in a regular neighborhood. I parked up the street and, trying not to be too intrusive, I just walked by it.

The only unusual element I saw were some ropes deliberately blocking off the driveway. From a prior news article, I was aware he employed a PSD, but I didn't see any obvious security presence on the property--likely they're very deliberately low-key.

Comment by Traubenfuchs 1 day ago

After a lackluster year the market did NOT like this move at all.

Comment by beambot 1 day ago

This is classic Buffett year, being fearful when others are greedy & building a massive war chest for when a correction inevitably occurs.

When it comes to Buffett (and Berkshire), it's really only reasonable to look at 5-year returns. 1-year or YTD are too susceptible to market sentiment rather than true value. Eg the Buffett indicator (stock market value / GDP) is 2x std dev above the norm right now -- way overpriced by historical standards.

Comment by epolanski 1 day ago

When it comes to equity investing even 5 years are too little. You want to judge returns in decades, otherwise you're speculating.

Equity markets have been historically negative or flat even for 14 years (most recently 12 between 2000 and 2012).

Comment by lotsofpulp 1 day ago

BRK-B doesn't seem much different than SP500 on 10, 15, and 20 year returns. BRK-B's 5 year return is 2% per year more than SP500.

https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/?ticker=BRK-B

If my goal is to not sell for a decade or more, I'm not sure what BRK offers over SP500, except more risk.

Comment by derf_ 1 day ago

Buffett has repeatedly said that Berkshire's size means it will no longer be able to deliver outsized outperformance. He also says that most people should invest in index funds. It is perfectly reasonable to just buy the S&P if that aligns with your financial goals.

> BRK-B's 5 year return is 2% per year more than SP500.

That said, 2% per year is generally considered a lot in diversified mutual fund / ETF land. You might not be able to charge hedge-fund level 2-and-20 fees for delivering that, but you could certainly charge multiples of what the low-cost indexers do (instead, Berkshire charges you approximately nothing). Now, Berkshire is a conglomerate, not a fund, and you could argue 2% is an appropriate risk premium for a single stock, even one as diverse as Berkshire (which is still less diverse than the S&P). But it is pretty impressive for something that is not a tech company. Those are the only things in the S&P that seem to be generating any returns these days (besides Berkshire, JP Morgan is the only other non-tech company with a market cap over $1tn, and arguably banks really are tech companies now, too).

> Apple is still 21% of BRK's publicly listed holdings

The public company investments are a minority of Berkshire's current value. The majority comes from wholly-owned operating companies and insurance businesses.

Comment by epolanski 1 day ago

2% is a massive difference.

Another user posted the difference between sp500 and Berkshire returns in the last 2 decades. Starting with 10k in one case you end up with 160, in the other at 240. And if the 2% delta stays there, it's going to compound even further.

Also, standard deviation on Berkshire is lower than the SP500, so the second is riskier.

Comment by ksherlock 1 day ago

BRK-B is also a top-10 (currently #10) component in the S&P 500 with a 1.74% weight. They also own ~40 stocks and I think around half of them are in the S&P 500 (including Apple, Amazon, and Google, which are also top 10 components but a combined ~15% weight), so, yeah.

Comment by findjashua 1 day ago

20-yr CAGR seems to be consistently higher than SP500: https://testfol.io/?s=7boYMdNxqjh

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Comment by Rebelgecko 1 day ago

Kind of a niche use case, but BRK.B is nice if you want a single stock that is relatively diversified, kinda mirrors the greater market, and doesn't pay dividends.

My employer uses a shitty HSA provider (Healthequity) who doesn't provide any sort of tax reporting, and I live in a state that taxes HSAs. Investing in BRK.B instead of a broad fund is a bit riskier, but it saves me from spending an hour tabulating individual transactions when I do my taxes

Comment by lotsofpulp 1 day ago

You can easily transfer (or rollover) HSA funds from HealthEquity ti Fidelity. Do it at as many times as you want, but at least once per year should suffice.

You don’t even have to send anything to HealthEquity, if I recall correctly. Just send Fidelity the Transfer of Assets form and they do it all:

http://fidelity.com/toa

I would make sure all the funds in HealthEquity are cash though, just to make things easier and reduce error.

Comment by Rebelgecko 1 day ago

HealthEquity charges a fee to do this which is very annoying. I think you can avoid it with an indirect rollover but you have to space those 365 days apart (not just in different years) and I prefer to not deal with the bookkeeping

Comment by StopDisinfo910 1 day ago

> BRK-B's 5 year return is 2% per year more than SP500.

> If my goal is to not sell for a decade or more, I'm not sure what BRK offers over SP500, except more risk.

I think you have already answered your own question. Historically, BRK-B has very often outperformed the SP500.

Plus, their investment philosophy is pretty clear. It's a solid alternative if you distrust tech which is today very heavy in the SP500.

Comment by lotsofpulp 1 day ago

>Historically, BRK-B has very often outperformed the SP500.

Huh? The point I was trying to make that the returns seem to equalize the further back we go.

> It's a solid alternative if you distrust tech which is today very heavy in the SP500.

The only reason BRK kept up with SP500 over the last 10 years is because of its outsized investment in Apple in 2016 or so, after the disastrous results of sitting out of tech in the 2000s and early 2010s and pursuing other investments such as Kraft Heinz or whatever.

As of September 2025, Apple is still 21% of BRK's publicly listed holdings:

https://www.cnbc.com/berkshire-hathaway-portfolio/

Comment by yibg 1 day ago

SPY has a cumulative return of ~370% from start of 2000. BRK.B is at ~1,200%. That's a pretty big difference.

You can discount Apple as being part of the portfolio, but that's a bit like saying, well they wouldn't have done so well if we remove the high performing stocks in the portfolio.

Comment by gen220 1 day ago

It's disingenuous to lump AAPL in with the tech stocks that compose the top part of the S&P 500 right now. Much of their valuations are highly-leveraged bets on a massive and nearish-term realization of a dream AI business scenario (NVDA, TSLA, AVGO, and to a lesser extent MSFT, GOOG and META).

What % of AAPL is a highly-leveraged bet on AI, in comparison to those listed above? If you could only own 1 of those over the previous and incoming 10 years, it'd be challenging to not choose Apple, with maybe Google as second (albeit with a sizable regulatory asterisk).

I know there's a tendency to reduce everything to numbers, but Berkshire is playing a qualitatively completely different risk management game from the rest of the companies in the top 10 in the S&P 500 right now.

Edit: selfishly, I think you have more to gain from understanding why BRK chose to invest in Apple, than you do from aiming to "explain away" BRK as unremarkable.

If you're trying to choose where to lazily (i.e. with as little mental effort as possible) stash away your investments, that's a separate discussion. Buffet himself recommends S&P 500. But BRK is playing a fundamentally different game from the S&P. An investment in VOO vs an investment in BRK support very different theses.

Comment by StopDisinfo910 1 day ago

> Huh? The point I was trying to make that the returns seem to equalize the further back we go.

Except this not factually true.

BRK-B has outperformed the SP500 on pretty much every time horizon outside of the 2009-2019 period and as you have pointed it significantly does so in the last 5 years.

> As of September 2025, Apple is still 21% of BRK's publicly listed holdings:

Tech is 34% of the SP500.

There is valid reasons to prefer SP500 ETF in a diversified portfolio. Hoping that it will perform better with less risk based on historical data is not one of them.

Comment by gbacon 1 day ago

Had to be expected. Buffett was a once in several generations talent.

Comment by unsupp0rted 1 day ago

Is there a write-up somewhere of how much of an outlier he really was?

Comment by NaOH 1 day ago

I would recommend the 2021 three-part Acquired podcast series on Berkshire. Episodes are long, though there are transcripts if you prefer reading over listening.

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/berkshire-hathaway-part-i

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/berkshire-hathaway-part-ii

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/berkshire-hathaway-part-iii

That said, I'll note this quote from Buffett:

>“I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that Tim Cook has made Berkshire a lot more money than I've ever made,” Buffett told the audience, referencing the remarkable 680% surge in Apple's stock since Berkshire first began acquiring shares in early 2016.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-says-embarrass...

Comment by kristofferc 1 day ago

Down 2% in the last 5 days?

Comment by jksmith 1 day ago

Aside: The 1.3B investment in UHC suggests BH thinks Obamacare will be around for awhile. That, or reversing healthcare costs will not happen for the time being.

Comment by kristianp 1 day ago

1.3B is peanuts for them really. More likely that Berkshire thinks its share price has reached a low enough point that it is good value.

Comment by chollida1 1 day ago

Not sure why this is posted on hackernews.

Maybe the OP thought this was announcing Buffett's successor or that Buffett himself was stepping down?

I guess the one big thing is that Todd Combs is out at Geico which is pretty bad news for the firm as he was tremendous at running Geico and helping Buffett and Munger in an investment capacity.

Who ever gets the new CIO role at Berkshire is going to have a field day. They currently hold about $382B in cash.

You can invest in alot with a 1/3 of Trillion dollars and you can outright buy the vast majority of companies with a bank roll that big.

My theory is that Buffett is hoping for one last large crash before he retires so he can go shopping for distressed companies.

With so many long term people announcing they will be leaving within the next 2 years this announcement sets the table nicely for a new CEO(probably Greg Abel) and new CIO to pick their team.

Comment by jodrellblank 1 day ago

> "My theory is that Buffett is hoping for one last large crash before he retires so he can go shopping for distressed companies."

There was a video of a QA session with him recently where he was asked something like that and he answered (paraphrased) "we are keeping cash so that we can buy cheap things when they come up. Some people think I'm waiting so Greg Abel(?) can have a nice opportunity when he takes over, but I'm not that nice, if I see something I will buy it". And reiterated the commonly stated idea that Charlie Munger thought they'd have done better if they only ever made ~5 carefully chosen investments in the lifetime of the company, and that investing too freely, quickly, often, was a bad idea.

I think that leaves a difficult situation for the next CEO, people are going to expect them to do something and probably the best thing they can do is as much nothing as possible, reading, watching and waiting. Without Buffet and Munger's history of that it might be hard to defend.

Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft 1 day ago

If there was ever a stock to invest in where the investors are satisfied for management to carefully do nothing, wouldn't it be Berkshire? Will they automatically go nutso-stupid once Buffet is gone? It's not exactly like it's a day-trader stock, the share price went from merely ridiculous to absurd-beyond the last few decades.

Comment by ikidd 1 day ago

Buffet is stepping down at the end of the year.

https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/nov1025.pdf

Comment by chollida1 1 day ago

agreed. That had been previously reported

Comment by itsthecourier 1 day ago

I think the same, we maybe entering the state of market Munger grew up in. Dalio has been calling it for years. if it happens on Buffet watch and he manages it successfully it would be a text book example of resiliency in a kind of centenarian almost-black swam scenario.

Wonder if he can pull it just as he did with Solomon Brothers