(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can subscribe here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)
Berkshire gains ground but still lags S&P as ’26 enters second halfWith 2026 just over halfway through the year, Berkshire Hathaway B shares are down 1.8% since the start of the year and 12.4 percentage points behind the S&P 500 Gain of 10.7%. (Including dividends, the S&P is up 11.4%, giving it a lead of 13.1 percentage points).
A strong june Berkshire erased nearly a third of its 17.5 percentage point deficit as of June 1, its largest losing margin of the year so far.
Even with this June increase, the second quarter (+10 days) was difficult for Berkshire, with a gain of just over 3% compared to the strong benchmark. technology focused An increase of 16%, completely erasing what was a slim 1.8 percentage point lead for Berkshire at the end of March.
Last year, Berkshire underperformed the S&P by 5.5 percentage points excluding dividends. The deficit was 7.0 percentage points, including dividends.
Berkshire executives seen at exclusive conference in Sun ValleyBerkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel and portfolio manager Ted Weschler are not included in the Forbes article about the ongoing “Sun Valley Billionaire Summer Camp” in Idaho.
But they are on the magazine’s list of participants and photos from CNBC’s David Grogan and Brendan McDermid of Reuters provide visual proof of their presence at Allen & Co.’s annual invitation-only mogul gathering, alongside names like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman.
Greg Abel, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway arrives at the annual Allen & Co. Media and Technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 8, 2026.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Ted Weschler, portfolio manager of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, United States, July 8, 2026.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Warren Buffett has been to Sun Valley for decades, but hasn’t been there in recent years.
In 1999, at the height of the dotcom craze, he gave a remarkable speech at the conference warning that although the Internet was going to be transformative, investors were expecting too much and were bound to be disappointed.
BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNETHIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC’S BUFFETT ARCHIVESAI could make financial scams a ‘growth industry’ (2024)Warren Buffett describes Seeing a convincing AI-generated video of himself, he fears the technology will make financial scams much more effective.
MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC: What do you think of the role of technological advances, particularly generative AI, on more traditional industries? THANKS…
WARREN BUFFETT: I don’t know anything about AI. But I do – I have – I don’t – that doesn’t mean I deny its existence or its importance or anything like that.
And last year I said, you know, that we let the genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons, and that genie has done terrible things lately.
And it’s the power of this genius that, you know, scares me. And on the other hand, I don’t know of any way to put the genie back in the bottle.
And AI is somewhat similar. It’s out – it’s half out of the bottle. And it’s extremely important, and it’s going to be done by someone…
Now, AI, I’ve had an experience that makes me a little nervous. And I’m just going to explain it.
Very recently – quite recently – I saw an image in front of my eyes on the screen, and it was me, and it was my voice and the kind of clothes I wear. And my wife or daughter wouldn’t have been able to detect any difference. And it delivered a message that no way was coming from me.
So when you think about the potential to scam people, if you can reproduce images that I can’t even say, that say, I need money, you know, this is your daughter, I just got into a car accident. I need fifty thousand dollars in wire transfer.
I mean, scamming has always been a part of the American scene. But that would make me, if I was interested in investing in scamming, the fastest growing industry of all time.
And it’s enabled in a way – you know, obviously AI has potential for good things too, but I don’t know how you – from the one I saw recently, I would practically send myself money to a crazy country. (Laugh)
So I don’t have any advice on how the world handles this, because I don’t think we know how to handle what we’ve done with nuclear engineering.
But I think, as someone who doesn’t understand it, that it does – it has a huge potential for good and a huge potential for bad, and I just don’t know how it happens.
BERKSHIRE STOCKS WATCHFour weeks
Twelve months
BRK.A stock price: $739,750.00
BRK.B stock price: $493.71
BRK.BP/E (TTM): 14.70
Market capitalization of Berkshire: $1,064,452,706,579
Berkshire Cash as of March 31: $397.4 billion (up 6.5% from December 31)
Excluding rail cash and subtracting Treasury bills payable: $380.2 billion (up 3.0% from December 31)
Berkshire repurchased $234 million worth of its shares in the first quarter of 2026.
MAIN BERKSHIRE STOCK INVESTMENTS – July 10, 2026Top holdings of Berkshire publicly traded stocks in the United States and Japan, by market value, based on latest closing prices.
The holdings are as of March 31, 2026, as shown in Berkshire Hathaway Filing 13F on May 15, 2026, with the exception of:
Alphabet, which includes the $10 billion in stock Berkshire agreed to buy directly from the company, as well as announced June 1, 2026. Berkshire has not yet officially revealed whether the transaction has been completed. The input is a combination of Class A And Class C Alphabetical actions. The market price is a weighted average of the prices of the two classes.Mitsubishii.e. as of April 30, 2026The complete list of stocks and current market values is available at CNBC.com. Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTSPlease send me any questions or comments regarding the newsletter at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
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Additionally, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. He collected there here on the Berkshire website.
— Alex Crippen, editor-in-chief, Warren Buffett Watch