On Thursday, May 15, Berkshire Hathaway must file its Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission, disclosing every equity position it held as of March 31, 2026. The filing is routine. What makes this one different is who signed off on it — or more precisely, who is now responsible for the portfolio it describes.

Greg Abel became Berkshire's operational chief executive on January 1. Warren Buffett remains chairman, but the day-to-day investment oversight has shifted. The Q1 2026 13F will be the first document to reflect that transition in portfolio form. Whatever Berkshire held, sold, or bought in the first three months of the year will become public record Thursday.

The Apple position is the watched line [1].

At the end of Q4 2025, Berkshire held approximately 227.79 million shares of Apple, worth roughly $62 billion at market prices. Apple still constituted approximately 22.6 percent of Berkshire's total reported holdings — an enormous concentration in a single equity for a firm of Berkshire's scale and conservatism. That number has been declining from its peak. Berkshire once held over 900 million Apple shares before a series of reductions that Buffett himself acknowledged publicly, at one point saying he had sold too early [2].

The Q1 figure will arrive without Buffett's accompanying commentary. There is no shareholder letter attached to a 13F. There is no Omaha conference room where Abel can walk through his reasoning. The filing will simply appear on the SEC's EDGAR system Thursday — numbers without narration.

What the market will read into it depends on which direction the Apple line moved.

If the position held steady at roughly 22 million shares, the interpretation writes itself: Abel is a steward, not a dealmaker, and the Buffett portfolio continues under new management without visible disruption. Stability would be reassuring to Berkshire shareholders who feared that a transition might accelerate the Apple reduction or scatter the portfolio into unfamiliar positions.

If the Apple stake was trimmed further, the interpretation becomes more complicated. Buffett acknowledged that the prior reductions were partly tax-motivated — realizing gains while federal rates remained relatively favorable. Whether Abel shares that calculus, or whether additional trimming reflects genuine portfolio repositioning, cannot be answered by a 13F alone. The form discloses positions; it does not explain decisions.

If the Apple position grew — Berkshire purchasing additional shares in Q1 — that would be the most surprising outcome. Apple's valuation has remained elevated, and Berkshire's historical posture has been to reduce exposure at high multiples, not extend it.

Institutional investors, analysts, and the financial press will scrutinize every line of the filing, but the Apple number will dominate the first cycle of coverage. Berkshire's other major holdings — including Coca-Cola, American Express, Bank of America, and Chevron — carry enormous absolute value but do not carry the symbolic weight of the Apple position. Apple became, over the course of Buffett's final decade, the defining bet of his late career. How Abel handles it defines something about his [3].

The filing deadline is 45 days after quarter-end. Thursday is day 45. Berkshire consistently files close to the deadline, giving itself maximum time before disclosure. If the firm requested confidential treatment for any position — an option the SEC grants in limited circumstances — that portion may be redacted from Thursday's public filing and disclosed at a later date. Berkshire has used this mechanism before.

Absent a confidential treatment request, the full picture emerges Thursday morning.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco