- What Berkshire Hathaway Bought in Q1 2026
- The Part Everyone's Missing: Berkshire Hathaway Made 16 Full Exits
- The Abel Playbook: Same Foundation, Sharper Edge
- Should You As An Investor Mirror Berkshire Hathaway’s Moves?
Berkshire Hathaway's Q1 2026 portfolio filing isn't just about what Greg Abel bought, it's about what a $263 billion machine quietly walked away from. In one quarter, Berkshire exited Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, UnitedHealth, and 12 other positions, while simultaneously tripling its bet on Google and making a fresh $2.65 billion wager on Delta Air Lines. This wasn't routine rebalancing. This was a pointed, deliberate signal about where one of the world's sharpest investment operations believes value has left the building and where it's just arrived.
Let's break down Berkshire's full Q1 2026 playbook: what Abel bought, what he sold, and should you as an investor mirror Berkshire’s move.
What Berkshire Hathaway Bought in Q1 2026
On May 15, 2026, Berkshire Hathaway filed its 13F with the SEC for the quarter ending March 31; the first quarterly disclosure under new CEO Greg Abel, who officially took the reins from Warren Buffett on January 1, 2026. The filing showed 7 buy transactions:
| Stock | Action | Key Detail |
| Alphabet Class A (GOOGL) | Added shares | Position up 204%, now ~54.2M shares (~$15.6B) |
| Alphabet Class C (GOOG) | New position | ~3.6M shares (~$1B) |
| Delta Air Lines (DAL) | New position | 39.8M shares, valued at ~$2.65B |
| New York Times (NYT) | Added shares | Position nearly tripled (+199%) |
| Lennar Class A (LEN) | Added shares | +43% increase; forward P/E of ~14.4 |
| Lennar Class B (LENB) | Added shares | Additional exposure to homebuilder thesis |
| Macy's (M) | New position | 3M shares; trades at ~9x forward earnings |
Sources: SEC 13F Filing (May 15, 2026), Yahoo Finance
The common thread across these buys? Value at a discount. Delta was beaten down by fuel cost fears tied to rising oil prices. Lennar slipped on softer homebuyer demand. Macy's trades at a single-digit earnings multiple. Alphabet, the one exception, was bought not for cheapness but for what Abel and Buffett clearly see as an unpriced AI moat.
The Part Everyone's Missing: Berkshire Hathaway Made 16 Full Exits
The 7 buys got most of the headlines. But Berkshire exited 16 positions entirely in Q1 marking it one of its most aggressive single-quarter cleanups in years, as per Motley Fool and Seeking Alpha. The portfolio shrank from 40 positions to just 26.
Some major stocks exited are:
| Exited Stock | Value Sold |
| Visa (V) | ~$2.91B |
| Mastercard (MA) | ~$2.28B |
| UnitedHealth (UNH) | ~$1.66B |
| Domino's Pizza (DPZ) | ~$1.40B |
| Aon (AON) | ~$1.27B |
| Pool Corp (POOL) | ~$702M |
| Amazon (AMZN) | ~$525M |
Source: Yahoo Finance, Motley Fool (May 2026)
These aren't bad companies. Visa and Mastercard are among the highest-quality businesses on earth. The sell signal here isn't about business quality, it's about price. At a historically expensive market, Berkshire chose to exit positions where the margin of safety had eroded. Berkshire has now been a net seller of equities for 14 consecutive quarters, cumulatively offloading ~$195 billion worth of stock. That’s discipline.
The Abel Playbook: Same Foundation, Sharper Edge
Here's the angle worth paying attention to: Abel isn't Buffett, and that's actually a feature, not a bug. Abel's style is more operationally granular, more tech-forward, and more willing to make calls Buffett has historically avoided.
Where Buffett famously refused to invest in airlines (then did, then exited at a loss), Abel went straight back in with Delta at scale. Where Buffett was slow to embrace tech, Abel tripled down on Alphabet in his very first quarter. He also restarted Berkshire's buyback program, something Buffett paused all of 2025, authorizing $235 million in Q1 repurchases, funded by a cash war chest that now sits at a staggering $397 billion.
The investment philosophy is identical: demand value, hold conviction, wait patiently. But the execution is faster, and the portfolio is leaner.
Should You As An Investor Mirror Berkshire Hathaway’s Moves?
Verdict: I have always personally believed that no matter what a famous investor does, you should always do your own research, see if the stock sits right with you on the basis of your investment philosophy and risk tolerance, and if the answer to that is yes, then and only then think about making new positions.
Also one very important caveat to note is that Berkshire's 13F is a lagging indicator, it reflects positions as of March 31, reported 45 days later. Prices have moved since. So always verify current valuations before acting.
Having said that, it’s worth looking briefly into top moves by Berkshire for context:
- Alphabet (GOOGL): A high-conviction buy backed by AI leadership (Gemini, Google Cloud growing fastest among top-3 providers), TPU demand, and Waymo. Berkshire tripled its stake.
- Delta (DAL): A cyclical bet at a distressed price. Requires tolerance for volatility tied to fuel costs and macro conditions.
- Lennar / Macy's: Value plays with near-term headwinds. Only suitable if you have a multi-year horizon.
- The exits (Visa, Mastercard, Amazon): Don't read these as bearish calls on the companies. Read them as a valuation ceiling being hit.
The real takeaway from Q1 2026 isn't which 7 stocks Berkshire bought. It's that the world's most closely watched investment firm just slimmed its portfolio to 26 names, loaded up on a lot of cash when everyone else seems to be chasing growth, and placed its biggest new bet on the company that's winning the AI race quietly. That's a signal worth sitting with.