(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up
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Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel is now a citizen of the United States.
Abel, a longtime Iowa resident who was born in the Canadian city of Edmonton in 1962, was among the roughly two dozen people from 16 countries who participated in an
annual naturalization ceremony hosted by the Iowa Cubs Thursday night in Des Moines, before the AAA minor league baseball team played the Buffalo Bisons.
In an
interview with CNBC's Becky Quick during the lunch break of last month's Berkshire annual meeting, Warren Buffett revealed Abel would be getting his American citizenship "very soon" and "as successful as he's been in everything else ... it means something to him to become an American citizen."
"You can't buy that anyplace — (laughs) — or package it, you know?"
Abel has an
estimated net worth of around $1 billion and runs a company valued at more than $1 trillion, but he generally maintains a low profile in public and his role as Berkshire's CEO was not highlighted at the event, even as he threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game.
The
report by NBC affiliate WHO-TV says only that "Greg Abel, a former Canadian citizen" threw the first pitch and "the ball went home with him, a nice souvenir from his first day as an American."
It was the 18th annual naturalization ceremony organized by the team, with 533 new citizens sworn in.
The team says another 5,000 candidates have become citizens at other non-game day ceremonies at the ballpark over the past six years.
Iowa Cubs General Manager Randy Wehofer told WHO many of the new citizens have "worked really hard, they've sacrificed a lot [and taken] a big risk to leave their home, to chase the American dream that many of us were born into, but not all. And so I think we can identify with that even if it's not our story. It's the American story."
For all these years, that kept Berkshire Hathaway out of the Dow. Warren Buffett's aversion to stock splits meant its stock price, especially for the
A shares, which are currently worth more than $745,000 each, would have overwhelmed the other 29 stocks, making it, in effect, just a Berkshire index.
Even the lower-priced
B shares, now at $499, used to have a much higher price than the typical Dow stock.
As a result, the median Dow stock price is around $244, with the highest-priced component,
Goldman Sachs, trading for a once-unthinkable $1020 per share. On Monday, Google parent Alphabet, with a $337 stock price, will replace Verizon Communications and its $47 stock because, S&P Dow Jones Indices says, "Persistently lower-priced stocks have an immaterial impact on the index."
And while he acknowledges it's hard to predict what company will be added, he thinks Berkshire and its $1 trillion market cap would be a "worthwhile addition," noting "it would be fitting to add the conglomerate while its chairman and controlling shareholder Warren Buffett, 95, is still alive."
A "hitch" is Goldman's 13% weighting means the Dow is already "heavy in financial stocks," and Berkshire is classified as a financial company.
And while Berkshire's $499 B shares are in the Dow's ballpark, there are still roughly twice the index's median price, and would be larger than every other Dow 30 stock except for Goldman and
Caterpillar ($997).
Some links may require a subscription:
- Barron's on MSN:
Berkshire looked like it got a bargain on Alphabet stock. It didn't.
- Investopedia:
Charlie Munger's Investment Rules: Building a Portfolio That Can Withstand 50% Declines
- Binance Square:
Buffett was right — just not about crypto, about you Warren Buffett says it's love, not money, that makes you a success. He shares his secret for making sure you never run out of it. 
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How do you define success and happiness? Are they related? And how would one achieve that?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I tell college students that when you get to be my age, you will be successful if the people that you would hope to have love you, do love you.
I mean, you — if — Charlie and I know a few people that have got a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners, and they get their names on buildings, and the truth is, nobody loves them.
And you know, not their family, not the people who name the buildings after them. You know, it's sad.
And it's — unfortunately, you know, it's something you can't buy. I mean, Charlie and I have talked a lot of times, if we could just buy a million dollars' worth of love, you know, I mean? It would be so much more satisfactory than to try and be lovable. (Laughter)
But it doesn't work that way, you know? ...
But the nice thing about it, of course, is that, you know, you always get back more than you give.
I mean, I don't know whether it was Oscar Hammerstein or who said, you know, "A bell's not a bell till you ring it, a song's not a song till you sing it. Love in the heart isn't put there to stay. Love isn't love till you give it away." And basically, you'll always get back more than you give away.
And if you don't give any, you don't get any. It's very simple...
There is nobody I know that has — that commands the love of people around them, people they work with, their family, their neighbors— that is other than a success or feels other than a success.
I don't know how the people feel that — where they know that nobody loves them, but I can't believe they feel very good.
So it's very simple. You can't get rid of love. If you try to give it out, you get it back more than you've given. And it's the best thing.
Charlie, what do you speak for? (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, you don't want to be like the motion picture executive in California, and they said the funeral was so large because everybody wanted to
make sure he was dead. (Laughter)
And there's a similar story about the minister saying at the funeral, "Won't anybody stand up and say a good word for the deceased?" And there was this long silence, and finally one guy stood up and he said, "Well," he said, "his brother was worse." (Laughter) ...
WARREN BUFFETT: Most people in this room are going to do very well financially. Most of the college students I talk to are going to do well financially.
And some of them are going to have very few friends — real friends — as they get older, and others, people won't be able to do enough for.
And I see it around me all the time.
Four weeks
Twelve months
BRK.A stock price: $745,140.03
BRK.B stock price: $498.66
BRK.B P/E (TTM): 14.85
Berkshire market capitalization: $1,074,089,811,219
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 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 Aand Class CAlphabet 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.
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at
alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (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. There are collected
here on Berkshire's website.
-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch
<small>Source: CNBC</small>
