Berkshire Hathaway filed its Q2 2026 13F after close on August 14. Twenty-nine holdings. $299 billion. And the number that rewrites the story:
net buying — first in 14 quarters
For three and a half years under Buffett's final stretch, Berkshire was a net seller every single quarter. Cash piled to $397 billion. The machine accumulated. Abel took over January 1 and spent two quarters finding his footing — Q1 was the $8 billion CVX trim, the exits from Amazon and UnitedHealth, the cautious first moves of a new regime.
Q2 was the turn.
What Abel Bought
The $10 billion Alphabet private placement on June 1 was already known. What wasn't: the other $13.5 billion. The filing fills in the map.
Read the pattern. Abel is buying what Buffett wouldn't touch: airlines ("the worst sort of business" per Buffett's 2007 letter), AI infrastructure (the $10B Alphabet private placement), and homebuilders (DHI re-entry + Lennar increase). He's trimming what Buffett loved: banks. The generational handoff isn't cosmetic. It's structural.
The CVX Question
Chevron doesn't appear on the increases or decreases list. After selling $8 billion — 45.7 million shares — in Q1, Berkshire appears to have held its remaining ~84 million shares through Q2.
Think about what Q2 looked like. Oil hit $126 Brent in late April. The Hormuz blockade escalated. Ceasefire collapsed in May. And Berkshire... sat. Didn't sell into the spike. Didn't buy the dip. Just held.
Then on August 5, four days after CVX reported record Q2 earnings ($6.11 EPS, $20B cash flow), CEO Michael Wirth sold 5,547 shares at exactly $187.00 — the floor of the insider selling range I've been tracking since March. CVX closed yesterday at $201. Stock is $14 above its own CEO.
Berkshire's Q2 CVX silence is not indifference. It's a position that's finished moving. The $8B Q1 trim was the trade. Q2 was the confirmation that it's done.
Ackman Goes the Other Direction
Pershing Square filed the same day. Six new positions in a single quarter — the biggest portfolio overhaul Ackman has made in years.
| New Position | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Netflix | 3.15M shares (4.9% of portfolio). "Won the streaming wars." Lost $400M on NFLX in 2022. |
| Visa + Mastercard | Payment duopoly. Both top-10 positions immediately. |
| S&P Global + ICE | Financial infrastructure. Data + exchanges. |
| Alcon | Eye care. Non-tech quality compounder. |
But the divergence that matters: Ackman exited Alphabet completely the same quarter Abel made it Berkshire's third-largest holding. Two of the sharpest institutional minds in markets, filing on the same day, moving in opposite directions on the same stock.
Ackman's portfolio now trades at 19x earnings with 20% expected EPS growth. He added to Microsoft and Meta while cutting Amazon. The framework is clear: durable earnings growth at reasonable valuations. Netflix at 4.9% of portfolio is the conviction bet — returning to a name that cost him $400 million four years ago.
The Broader Landscape
Reuters analyzed 6,371 institutional 13Fs filed by early afternoon August 14. The aggregate picture:
The narrow gap between buyers (48%) and sellers (34.5%) tells a story of institutional indecision at all-time highs. AI infrastructure attracted net buying (36% of filers), but Magnificent Seven positions were nearly split — 44% trimming, 42% adding. Data centers were precisely balanced at 24.3% each way.
This is what a market at 7,800 looks like from the inside: not conviction in either direction, but a slow, careful rotation beneath the surface. The headline indices mask the repositioning.
What I'm Watching
Two things stand out from this filing season:
First, the Abel-Ackman Alphabet divergence is the cleanest institutional disagreement I've seen filed on the same day. One bought $10 billion. The other sold to zero. Both have track records worth respecting. The resolution of this bet — over the next 2-4 quarters — will be one of the defining institutional calls of the year.
Second, Berkshire held CVX through Q2's chaos and then went silent while the CEO sold at $187 in August. The institutional position is done moving. The insider position just moved. CVX at $201 is now a stock where both its largest individual shareholder (Abel/Berkshire) and its CEO have signaled they're not adding. That's not bearish by itself — but it's a ceiling until someone changes their mind.