Berkshire Hathaway shares hit eight-month high

(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.) Berkshire shares hit eight-month high Berkshire Hathaway shares rallied to an eight-month high this week and there could be more gains ahead if they continue to catch up to the S&P 500. The B shares closed Tuesday at $512.37, their highest level since November 28, when they finished at $513.81. They closed Friday at $511.54, down 5.2% from the all-time closing high of $539.80 on May 2 of last year, the day before Warren Buffett revealed he would step down as CEO at the end 2025. The Class A shares ended Tuesday at $768,010, also their highest close since November 28's $770,100. Friday's close of $766,600 was 5.3% below their all-time closing high of $809,350. A story in Barron's says Berkshire's rally "has room to run" since the stock remains "well behind" the benchmark S&P 500, which is 7.6 percentage points ahead. But Berkshire has erased more than half of its 17.5 percentage point deficit just two months ago. Berkshire is also lagging behind competitors in two key sectors: railroads ... ... and insurance. Another positive for Berkshire is the big gains for three of its biggest equity portfolio holdings. Number one Apple, now worth more than $70 billion, is up 13.6% so far this year. Coca-Cola, Berkshire's third largest position at $35 billion, has jumped 25% year-to-date. Earnings this week came in ahead of expectations and Coke raised its full-year outlook. Number four Bank of America is up 12.6% on the year. That stake is now valued at almost $32 billion. Berkshire's gain of around 3% on Tuesday may have been partially fueled by UBS analyst Brian Meredith raising his price target on the B shares to $585 from $570, and on the A shares to $877,848 from $854,596. While maintaining a "buy" rating, Meredith also edged his earnings estimates higher and welcomed a Barron's report two weeks ago that Berkshire appeared to have bought back as much as $11 billion of its stock in the second quarter. We'll get the actual number when Berkshire releases second-quarter results, expected on Saturday, August 8. BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET Some links may require a subscription: - Barron's on MSN: Warren Buffett's worst-ever deal benefits this place the most - Barron's on MSN: Why Berkshire Hathaway would win if the Fed lifts interest rates - The Motley Fool: Why Berkshire's stake in Apple still matters more than people think - The Motley Fool: Warren Buffett's legacy oil bet is paying off under Greg Abel. Nobody's talking about it. HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC'S BUFFETT ARCHIVE Why Buffett doesn't ask his friends for favors (2003) Warren Buffett responds to a request from an audience member to enlist the support of his "cousin" Jimmy Buffett in saving the trees in the Florida botanical garden and theme park Cypress Gardens. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Several weeks from now I'll be before [Florida] Governor [Jeb] Bush with the Friends of Cypress Gardens. We have a website ... trying to keep a developer from clear-cutting the trees in Cypress Gardens, a national treasure. And my question is, would you consider contacting your "cousin," [musician] Jimmy Buffett, about possibly helping us in some way? ... WARREN BUFFETT: I get asked to contact — probably the one I get asked to contact the most is Bill Gates, but I get asked to contact all kinds of people. And I mean, everybody is slipping me envelopes with letters in them, sending things to the office and saying, "Won't you get this person?" and all they can say is no. I don't do — I don't make requests of my friends, basically, for anything. And I just — I would spend the rest of my life doing it. They would feel — I would never know — (applause) — you know, what they were doing — You know, I would never know what they were doing because I was asking versus what they really felt. I mean it's an impossible — from my standpoint at least — that's an impossible game to get into, in terms of that. I mean when [Washington Post publisher] Kay Graham was alive, everybody, you know, wanted her for one reason or another. And they've all got causes. And, frankly, they, you know, they want to use me to get her, or Jimmy Buffett, or whomever, to say yes to something that they're saying yes to, partially, because they feel they don't want to say no to me. And I, you know, that — I just don't want to use my friendship for that purpose, frankly. And I don't do it, even for things that I strongly believe in, myself... I've never had one of those honorary dinners where they send out, you know, to all the suppliers to Berkshire and everything and start leaning on them and saying, you know, "We're honoring Warren." Well, hell, if they want to honor me, they can honor me without soliciting all my friends for money. I mean, I don't consider that much of an honor if the reason they picked me was because I got rich friends. So, I just don't do that. BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH Four weeks Twelve months BRK.A stock price: $766600.01 BRK.B stock price: $511.54 BRK.B P/E (TTM): 15.23 Berkshire market capitalization: $1,102,963,354,142 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. (All figures are as of the date of publication, unless otherwise indicated) BERKSHIRE'S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS - July 31, 2026 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 [email protected]. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.) If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here. Also, Buffett's annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. They are collected here on Berkshire's website. -- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch