Berkshire Hathaway’s Greg Abel purchases $39B in stocks in 6 months

Warren Buffett spent his final years as Berkshire Hathaway CEO sitting on a mountain of cash so large it made the GDP of most countries look modest. Greg Abel, his successor, apparently looked at that mountain and decided it was time to start spending. In the first six months of 2026, Abel deployed approximately $39.4 billion into equity purchases, dwarfing the $7.1 billion Berkshire invested during the same stretch in 2025 under Buffett. That’s a more than fivefold increase in buying activity, and it represents the clearest signal yet that the post-Buffett era at Berkshire will look meaningfully different from the late-Buffett era. From cash hoarder to aggressive buyer Abel officially took the reins on January 1, 2026, after Buffett retired on December 31, 2025. He inherited a company sitting on nearly $397 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of Q1 2026, a war chest that had been growing for years as Buffett sold more than he bought across 14 consecutive quarters. That selling spree is now definitively over. In the second quarter of 2026, Berkshire became a net buyer of stocks for the first time in more than three years, snapping up $23.5 billion in marketable equities. The...