Greg Abel has now made decisions. He has not yet written about them. That is the brief.

Berkshire Hathaway's first-quarter 2026 13F landed Friday after the close, the first portfolio statement filed under Abel as sole chief executive since he assumed the role from Warren Buffett in 2025. [1] The filing tripled Alphabet to roughly 58 million shares worth about $17 billion, added roughly 40 million Delta shares worth about $2.6 billion, opened a small Macy's position, and exited Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, Domino's, and UnitedHealth. [2] The portfolio shrank from $274 billion to $263 billion and from 40 names to 26.

The paper's Saturday major on the numbers Abel actually filed — Alphabet tripled, Visa and Mastercard out does the arithmetic; the Friday brief on the filing rather than the vibe said the document would speak before the character study did. The document has spoken. The character study is still unwritten.

Abel is Omaha-quiet, operations-first, longtime chief of Berkshire Hathaway Energy before his elevation. [3] He does not give earnings calls. He has not yet released an annual letter under his own name. Buffett's letters were the part of Berkshire that traveled outside the filings — the prose around the arithmetic. Abel inherits the arithmetic. The prose has not arrived.

That absence is itself a fact about this company in 2026. A 13F shows that Visa is gone and Alphabet has tripled. It does not say why. Until the letter arrives, every interpretation of Abel's first quarter is being done by other people, in other documents, without him. The filing exists. The voice does not yet.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco