Berkshire Hits $397B Cash, Oil Hits $130 Physical, and Greg Abel Is Basically Flying the Plane Solo Now
S&P earnings grew 28.8% vs. 14% expected, oil's paper-physical spread hit $35, and the post-Buffett era officially kicked off — all in one week
Ticker Ratings
| Ticker | Rating | Entry Price | Current | $ Gain | % Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAPL Apple Inc. | buy | $280.07 | — | — | — |
| GOOGL Alphabet Inc. | buy | $385.34 | — | — | — |
| META Meta Platforms, Inc. | hold | $608.81 | — | — | — |
| PWR QUANTA SERVICES, INC. | buy | $743.10 | — | — | — |
| CVX CHEVRON CORP | hold | $190.59 | — | — | — |
| QCOM QUALCOMM INC/DE | buy | $176.80 | — | — | — |
| ORCL ORACLE CORP | buy | $171.61 | — | — | — |
| CLX CLOROX CO /DE/ | sell | $87.23 | — | — | — |
| RIOT Riot Platforms, Inc. | hold | $18.39 | — | — | — |
Let's start with the elephant in the room wearing a Nebraska accent: Berkshire Hathaway ($BRK.B) held its first annual meeting under Greg Abel this week, and the arena was reportedly half empty. Poetic, really. Operating earnings up 18% YoY, cash pile at a record $397 billion, and Buffett's message from the chairman's seat? The market is a church with a casino attached — which honestly should be BullApe's tagline. Abel's answer to 'who's your Charlie?' was essentially 'Ajit Jain and also Warren's still right there,' which is the leadership transition equivalent of saying 'I'm fine' after a car crash.
Meanwhile, the oil market is doing something genuinely wild that deserves more airtime: the spread between paper Brent futures (~$100/barrel) and physical dated Brent ($130+/barrel) has blown out to $35 — the largest ever recorded according to Andrei Jikh. The US is importing 6.3M barrels/day and exporting only 4.1M. Spirit Airlines ($SAVE) didn't survive the energy shock, officially shutting down after a failed government bailout. Fuel costs broke what low-cost carriers were built on.
On the bright side, $AAPL dropped a $100B buyback and guided strong Q3 revenue, $GOOGL surged 12% on a monster quarter with Google Cloud up 63%, and $PWR (Quanta Services) popped 16% as utilities are apparently being asked to double in size to power the AI buildout. S&P 500 Q1 earnings grew 28.8% vs. the 14% analysts expected — Tom Lee raised his hand and said 'told you so,' and honestly, fair enough.
The market is climbing for real reasons this time. That's either very reassuring or the setup for the most expensive 'I told you so' in history.