(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)

Two weeks ago, Berkshire Hathaway reported its huge cash reserves declined by billions of dollars during the second quarter, the first significant drop since early 2022.

It appeared to many, including me, that Greg Abel was making his mark as the company's new CEO by putting a "big chunk of Berkshire's cash to work."

In the wake of last week's disclosure of exactly what it had in its equity portfolio as of June 30, it now looks like it's more complicated than that.

Barron's Andrew Bary makes the case that Abel hasn't been involved in stock calls at all and its Warren Buffett who "still likes making big investment decisions involving Berkshire's $350 billion-plus equity portfolio—and letting Berkshire holders know that he's still in the game" as he approaches his 96th birthday.

While Buffett was careful to note he often talks with Abel, and neither would do anything the other didn't approve of, he revealed in a CNBC interview last month he had "initiated" Berkshire's Alphabet investment.

That stock first appeared in the portfolio in last year's third quarter.

Bloomberg News reported that Berkshire's Q2 purchase of $10 billion in Alphabet shares directly from the company came after Abel gave a "rapid signoff" to the deal in response to a "stealthy weekend call" to Berkshire from Goldman Sachs, the firm putting together Alphabet's enormous equity offering.

Presumably, Buffett also gave his OK.

Bary believes the second largest purchase in Q2, Delta Air Lines, was the work of portfolio manager Ted Weschler.

He notes Abel has "no formal portfolio management experience and doesn't appear to be making any notable stock-picking decisions" while "he has his hands full" running Berkshire's many operating companies and looking for new ones to buy.

Abel has been spending some of Berkshire's cash with his $6.8 billion acquisition of Taylor Morrison Home, although it didn't close until after Q2 ended.

The roughly $17 billion increase in Berkshire Hathaway's Alphabet stake during the second quarter made Google's parent the third largest holding in the company's equity portfolio, displacing Coca-Cola in that slot.

As of June 30, the end of the quarter, the Alphabet shares had a market value of $37.77 billion, $5.26 billion ahead of Coca-Cola's $32.51 billion.

Since then, however, Alphabet shares have dropped by 3.5% while Coca-Cola has rallied by 12.1%.

As a result, as of Friday's close, Alphabet's lead is just a razor-thin $20 million.

On two days, July 30 and August 20, Coca-Cola topped Alphabet by slim margins at the close.

A federal appeals court in St. Louis is upholding the 2024 settlement of a class action antitrust suit against Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary HomeServices of America and the National Association of Realtors, Reuters reports.

HomeServices agreed to pay $250 million of a more than $1 billion settlement to resolve claims that long-standing rules over the splitting of real estate commissions kept them artificially high.

As part of the settlement, the NAR agreed to revise those rules.

Some of the plaintiffs, however, think they were short-changed and went to court to block the deal.

This week's ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backs a lower court's approval of the settlement.

A lawyer for some of the objectors tells Reuters they may ask the Supreme Court to review the case. "Everyone got next to nothing for the sake of settling. There's something just not right about that."

The settlement came after a 2023 jury trial found the defendants liable for $1.78 billion in damages. That award could have been tripled under U.S. antitrust law.

HomeServices CEO Chris Kelly is quoted as saying this week's court win provides "additional certainty" to the company, its agents, and its customers.

The unit's parent, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, still faces a separate proposed antitrust class action suit over real estate commissions after a judge ruled last April that it is not covered by the HomeServices settlement.

When BHE was targeted two years ago, a lawyer for plaintiffs told The New York Times, "Berkshire Hathaway is the leader of the pack. It's much bigger than N.A.R... If you want to bring about change in corporate America, hit them in the pocketbook. And that's exactly where this is aimed."

Some links may require a subscription:

• Investor's Business Daily: Warren Buffett's Portfolio Is Looking Even More Like The Dow Jones Index. This Is Why.

• MarketWatch on Morningstar: Berkshire Hathaway bet big on the U.S. housing market. You probably shouldn't follow suit.

• Business Insider on MSN: Elon Musk finally has Warren Buffett as a shareholder — sort of

• Bloomberg's Masters in Business video podcast: Learning from Buffett and Munger

Warren Buffett weighs in on how he judges a product's usefulness when he considers acquiring its maker.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm wondering, when you are considering an acquisition, how you look at the usefulness of the product?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, obviously we look at what the market says is the utility. And the market has voted very heavily for Dexter Shoe, just to be an example.

I don't know many how many pairs of shoes they were turning out back in 1958 or thereabouts, but year after year, people have essentially voted for the utility of that product.

There are 750 million or so 8-ounce servings of one product or another from the Coca-Cola Company consumed every day around the world. And there are those of us who think the utility is very high. I can't make it through the day without a few. But there are other people that might rate it differently.

But essentially, people are going to get thirsty and if this is the way they take care of their thirst better than — and they prefer that to other forms — then I would rate the utility high of the product. But, I think it's hard to argue with the market on that.

I mean, people — some people may think that, you know, listening to a rock concert is not something of high utility. Other people might think it's terrific.

And so, we would judge that — I don't think we would come to an independent decision that there was some great utility residing in some product that had been available to the public for a long time, but that the public and not endorsed in any way.

Four weeks

Twelve months

BRK.A stock price: $743,500.00

BRK.B stock price: $495.82

BRK.B P/E (TTM): 12.47

Berkshire market capitalization: $1,061,294,568,527

Berkshire Cash as of June 30: $365.5 billion (Down 8.0% from March 31)

Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $359.2 billion (Down 3.8% from March 31)

Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion of its shares in Q2 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 June 30, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on August 14, 2026, except for:

• Mitsubishi, which is as of August 28, 2025

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