The Berkshire Hathaway 13F for the quarter ended March 31 is due by the close of business Friday, May 15 — the 45th day after the quarter-end, per the SEC's standard institutional-investor filing rule. [1] Some financial desks have been pricing it as a Thursday event. The filing window does not open until 4 p.m. Eastern Friday, and historically the filing lands minutes before deadline.

What lands Friday is the first 13F under Greg Abel as CEO. Buffett retired December 31. The Q4 2025 baseline — filed February 17 — listed 42 holdings, $274.16 billion in equity portfolio value, and the same top four lines that have anchored the book for years: Apple, American Express, Bank of America, Coca-Cola. [2] That filing already showed reductions in Apple and Bank of America in Q4, plus a brand-new 5,065,744-share position in The New York Times Company. [3]

The Q1 directional read is already on the record. Berkshire's May 2 first-quarter 10-Q reported that the "Banks, insurance, and finance" cost basis fell from $15.454 billion at December 31 to $14.685 billion at March 31 — a $769 million reduction in three months. [4] The Motley Fool's Sean Williams read that as Abel continuing to sell Bank of America for a seventh consecutive quarter, with BAC still trading at a 37 percent premium to book and no "forever" designation from either Buffett or Abel. [5] The 13F line will confirm or refute the read; the cost-basis math says the signature is already there.

Friday's market-moving questions are narrow: did Apple change, did Bank of America keep falling, did Kraft Heinz exit the top ten after Abel's "well short of adequate" letter, and is there a genuinely new position large enough to matter at 42-holding scale. The clean reads will be available within an hour of filing.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco