Key Points
-
Current CEO Greg Abel clearly has his own vision for the direction Berkshire Hathaway needs to take.
-
While most of Berkshire’s current holdings could have a place in your portfolio, Abel’s taking on a handful of risky bets that most ordinary investors might want to avoid.
-
Two of Berkshire Hathaway’s top positions right now are familiar technology names that you very likely already own anyway.
- These 10 stocks could mint the next wave of millionaires ›
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) may have grown to its current size and status thanks to Warren Buffett’s six decades’ worth of savvy stewardship. It’s Greg Abel’s baby now, though.
While the current CEO still regularly speaks with the company’s former one, Abel’s clearly calling the shots, unwinding some of Buffett’s long-held picks since taking the helm at the beginning of this year. Berkshire shed its stakes in credit card giants Visa and Mastercard in the first quarter of 2026, as well as its small Amazon position first picked up in 2019.
Missed AI’s “Act 1”? Act 2 Could Be 15x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn’t buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of “Act 1″—the R&D phase. “Act 2” is the global rollout. Continue »
Perhaps far more noteworthy to interested investors, however, are the names Berkshire Hathaway still holds, or that Greg Abel has added since taking over. Here’s a closer look at five of these stocks and what $1,000 allocated to each could become by 2030. They’re not necessarily the conglomerate’s five biggest holdings, to be clear. But these are five names that investors may be eyeing for their own portfolios.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Lennar
Homebuilder Lennar (NYSE: LEN) (NYSE: LENB) isn’t Berkshire’s biggest bet on the housing market’s recovery. That honor belongs to its combined privately held stakes in mobile home manufacturer Clayton Homes and recently acquired homebuilder Taylor Morrison. Lennar is Berkshire Hathaway’s biggest publicly traded play on residential housing construction, with a position worth over $2.2 billion when including Lennar’s B shares, which offer shareholders 10 times the voting power of the company’s ordinary common stock.
It’s one of Greg Abel’s more questionable expansions of an existing Buffett pick. Most everyone agrees the highly cyclical housing market will eventually bounce back, given that purchasing activity is so tepid right now. They’re just not sure it’s going to happen soon enough to put this kind of capital at risk just yet.
What’s lost in this worry is that despite uncomfortably high home prices, the AEI Housing Center reports a nationwide shortage of around 6 million homes right now, versus the roughly 1.3 million the U.S. Census Bureau says we’re on pace to build this year. Although it’s far from a rock-steady guarantee, that’s why it’s conceivable that a $1,000 trade in slow-moving Lennar today could be worth on the order of $1,400 within four years.
Just be prepared for the possibility that this stock also may not budge at all between now and then, if there’s no real price relief in store.
2. Alphabet
Buffett opened up a modest Berkshire position in Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) in Q3 of 2025. Greg Abel gets credit for making it a mainstay, though. Between its ordinary shares and the (non-voting) C shares it now owns, Alphabet is now Berkshire Hathaway’s third-biggest holding, worth almost $37 billion. That’s about 10% of the conglomerate’s total stock portfolio.
It’s been described as a Buffett-esque way of capitalizing on the artificial intelligence opportunity. And Alphabet is an impressive AI player to be sure.
That may not quite be why Buffett and Abel are so interested, though. While both CEOs have to believe that artificial intelligence has its place in the future, they are more likely to appreciate that Alphabet’s future isn’t overwhelmingly dependent on becoming a smashing AI success. It’s still, first and foremost, a search-based advertising outfit, which still accounts for more than two-thirds of its revenue and the vast majority of its operating income. Although not the growth driver that AI is, this more established cash-cow business is also more predictable and resilient, supporting companywide revenue growth that’s consistently been above 20% of late.
More to the point for investors, more of the same double-digit revenue growth could turn a $1,000 position now into around $1,500 by 2030, helped by the ticker’s recent subpar performance.
3. Occidental Petroleum
Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) isn’t Berkshire’s biggest oil and gas trade. That’s still Chevron. Nevertheless, at $16 billion, Occidental is still one of Berkshire’s larger holdings.
Most of this energy giant’s revenue comes from conventional oil and gas mining. It’s also an integrated outfit with a fair amount of exposure to midstream operations and to the performance chemical sliver of the business. Even so, Occidental Petroleum doesn’t look too terribly different than its peers, even if it’s highly focused on the U.S. Permian Basin.
There is some awkwardness here, however. Berkshire owned a large stake in Occidental because Buffett was a big fan of former CEO Vicki Hollub’s leadership. Hollub’s no longer in that role, though, and Buffett is out of the picture as well. What remains is just a recent history of below-average performance from OXY stock, and $8.5 billion worth of the energy company’s preferred stock that Occidental is supposed to begin buying back from Berkshire beginning in 2029. It’s not clear if the company will be in a position to comfortably make that happen by then, even if the energy company is a respectable cash cow in its own right.
Given this company-specific uncertainty, as well as the sheer uncertainty of the energy industry’s future, it wouldn’t be shocking if OXY made little to no net forward progress for the foreseeable future.
4. Delta Air Lines
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) is one of Greg Abel’s least popular, most concerning recent purchases.
Although experienced investors recognize the right time to buy any cyclical stock is when it’s down for cyclical reasons, Delta may be a smart exception to this strategy. Even Buffett himself said in his 2007 letter to Berkshire shareholders, “The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers.” He then adds for good measure, “Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.”
For the record, Berkshire Hathaway did purchase airline stocks after that colorful castigation. It also achieved the disappointing results with them that Buffett seemingly warned himself were likely. Maybe this time is different. People are still traveling, after all. Although demand for air travel is slowing slightly now, it is cooling off from continued recovery growth into 2025, with a record-breaking 9.8 billion passengers that year, according to the Airports Council International.
Nevertheless, this highly competitive, low-margin business remains perpetually vulnerable to even the slightest of headwinds. Last quarter’s adjusted net income fell 2% year over year, for perspective, despite 21% revenue growth. That’s why, given the possibility that Berkshire’s $4.5 billion stake in Delta could go nowhere over the course of the coming four years, this might be one of Abel’s picks to steer clear of for yourself in favor of higher-odds options.
5. Apple
Finally, Berkshire’s position in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is one that Warren Buffett eventually allowed, but Greg Abel is clearly more than willing to stick with it. Despite selling the majority of the holding that peaked in 2018, the trade’s remaining value is still worth $78 billion thanks to continued price gains. That’s more than 20% of the total value of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock portfolio right now, making it the conglomerate’s biggest trade. It’s still going strong too. AAPL shares just hit yet another record high.
Sure, as the old adage goes, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” There’s no assurance that this stock will continue performing as it has of late. Past performance is a pretty good indication of what to expect from a company in the future, though, particularly if the underpinnings of that past performance are still in place.
And in this case, they are. Apple’s iPhone remains wildly popular, and the company continues to leverage its reach into a growth driver for its apps and services business, which is now its second-biggest division (by a mile) behind the iPhone. The ongoing integration of artificial intelligence into these devices will of course only deepen consumers’ loyalty to the Apple brand.
It’s difficult to predict how, and by how much, this will translate into top- and bottom-line growth. Assuming recent results are any indication, a $1,000 position in AAPL today could easily turn into a $1,500 holding — maybe more — over the course of the coming four years.
Missed AI’s “Act 1”? Act 2 Could Be 14x Bigger
Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn’t buy Nvidia in 2005.
But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of “Act 1″—the R&D phase. “Act 2” is the global rollout, a massive technology build-out that Google’s CEO says could be more profound than fire or electricity.
While everyone watches the chip designers, one “backbone” company provides the critical technology that Nvidia and AMD literally cannot function without. We’ve detailed this under-the-radar player in our new AI Playbook.
James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Chevron, Lennar, Mastercard, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends Delta Air Lines. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
