Berkshire Hathaway’s B shares are down 1.8% year-to-date, significantly trailing the S&P 500 by over 12 percentage points, despite a strong June. Meanwhile, Berkshire CEO Greg Abel and portfolio manager Ted Weschler attended the exclusive Sun Valley conference, a gathering where Warren Buffett famously warned about the dot-com bubble in 1999. Buffett has also recently expressed concerns about AI’s potential to fuel a ‘growth industry’ in financial scams, citing a convincing deepfake of himself.
(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.)
Berkshire gains ground but still trails S&P as '26 enters second half
With 2026 a bit more than half over, Berkshire Hathaway's B shares are down 1.8% year-to-date, lagging the S&P 500's 10.7% gain by 12.4 percentage points. When including dividends, the S&P's 11.4% gain extends its lead to 13.1 percentage points.
A strong June for Berkshire managed to cut almost a third of its deficit, which stood at a significant 17.5 percentage points as of June 1, marking its largest losing margin of the year so far.
(Chart: Berkshire Hathaway B shares vs. S&P 500 year-to-date performance)
Despite this June recovery, the second quarter (plus 10 days) has been challenging for Berkshire, with a gain of just over 3% compared to the benchmark's robust tech-driven 16% advance. This strong market rally completely erased Berkshire's slim 1.8 percentage point lead held at the end of March.
(Chart: Quarterly performance comparison of Berkshire Hathaway vs. S&P 500)
Looking back, Berkshire underperformed the S&P by 5.5 percentage points last year, excluding dividends. With dividends included, the deficit widened to 7.0 percentage points.
Berkshire execs spotted at exclusive Sun Valley conference
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel and portfolio manager Ted Weschler were present at the annual Allen & Co. invitation-only gathering of moguls in Idaho, often referred to as "Sun Valley's Billionaire Summer Camp." Although not explicitly featured in a recent Forbes article on the event, they were listed among attendees, alongside prominent figures like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman. Photos from CNBC's David Grogan and Brendan McDermid of Reuters visually confirmed their attendance.
Greg Abel, President and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway arrives at the annual Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho on July 8, 2026.
Ted Weschler, portfolio manager for Berkshire Hathaway Inc., attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 8, 2026.
While Warren Buffett attended Sun Valley for decades, he has not been present in recent years. Notably, in 1999, during the peak of the dot-com boom, he delivered a memorable speech at the conference, cautioning that despite the internet's transformative potential, investors were setting unrealistic expectations and were likely to face disappointment.
BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET
Some links may require a subscription:
- Barron's on MSN: Bank of America stock hits record high and Berkshire Hathaway is a big winner
- Financial Express (India): Warren Buffett vs. Indian grandmothers: Who wins the great gold debate
HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC'S BUFFETT ARCHIVE
AI could make financial scams a 'growth industry' (2024)
Warren Buffett describes seeing a convincing AI-generated video of himself that has him worried the technology will make financial scams much more effective.
(Video: Warren Buffett discussing AI's potential for financial scams, from the 2024 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, 3:11 duration)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How do you think about the role of technological advances, especially generative AI, on more traditional industries? Thank you...
WARREN BUFFETT: I don't know anything about AI. But I do — I do have — I don't — that doesn't mean I deny its existence or importance or anything of the sort. 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 been doing some terrible things lately. And the power of that genie is what, you know, scares the hell out of me. And on, the other hand, I don't know any way to get the genie back in the bottle. And AI is somewhat similar. It's out — it's part-way out of the bottle. And it's enormously important, and it's going to be done by somebody... Now AI, I had one experience that does make me a little nervous. And I'll just explain it. Very recently — fairly recently — I saw an image in front of my eyes on the screen, and it was me, and it was my voice and wearing the kind of clothes I wear. And my wife or my daughter wouldn't have been able to detect any difference. And it was delivering a message that no way came from me. So — it — when you think of the potential for scamming people, if you can reproduce images that I can't even tell, that say, I need money, you know, it's your daughter, I've just had a car crash. I need fifty thousand dollars wired. I mean, scamming has always been part of the American scene. But this would make me, if I was interested in investing in scamming, it's going to be the growth 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 — based on the one I saw recently, I practically would send money to myself over in some crazy country. (Laughter) So I don't have any advice on how the world handles it because I don't think we know how to handle what we did with the nuclear genie. But I do think, as someone who doesn't understand a damn thing about it, that it is — it has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm, and I just don't know how that plays out.
BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH
Four weeks
(Chart: Berkshire Hathaway stock performance over four weeks)
Twelve months
(Chart: Berkshire Hathaway stock performance over twelve months)
BRK.A stock price: $739,750.00
BRK.B stock price: $493.71
BRK.B P/E (TTM): 14.70
Berkshire market capitalization: $1,064,452,706,579
Berkshire Cash as of March 31: $397.4 billion (Up 6.5% from Dec. 31)
Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $380.2 billion (Up 3.0% from Dec. 31)
Berkshire repurchased $234 million of its shares in Q1 2026.
BERKSHIRE'S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS - Jul. 10, 2026
(Chart: Berkshire's Top Equity Holdings)
Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices. Holdings are as of March 31, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on May 15, 2026, except for:
- Alphabet, which includes the $10 billion in shares that Berkshire agreed to buy directly from the company, as announced on June 1, 2026. Berkshire has not yet formally disclosed whether the transaction has been completed. The entry is a combination of Class A and Class C Alphabet shares. The market price is a weighted average of the prices of the two classes.
- Mitsubishi, which is as of April 30, 2026
The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
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Also, Buffett's annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire's website.
-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch
