Abel Ends Berkshire's 14-Quarter Selling Streak, Wins China
Greg Abel has halted Berkshire Hathaway's long-running net-selling streak, reassuring Chinese investors that the conglomerate's value-investing ethos will survive Warren Buffett's departure as CEO.
Warren Buffett stepped down as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway on January 1, ending a 60-year tenure, but the company's new leader is already making his mark on the portfolio. Greg Abel, who joined Berkshire in 1999 and ran its non-insurance businesses since 2018, has ended the conglomerate's 14-quarter net-selling streak of equities. The shift signals a potential tactical adjustment under the new regime while maintaining the firm's foundational strategy.
This leadership transition carries outsized weight in Asian markets, particularly in China. For decades, thousands of Chinese investors traveled annually to Omaha, treating the shareholder meetings less as corporate briefings and more as audiences with an oracle. The depth of this following underscores how heavily domestic market participants have leaned on Berkshire's signals to navigate their own equity markets.
Since the 1990s, Buffett's strict focus on buying undervalued assets based on fundamentals rather than short-term trends has served as a "north star for Chinese investors," according to Kevin Chen Kaifeng, chief economist at Horizon Financial in New York. As value investing gained traction in the country, Berkshire's trades were closely monitored by local professionals as a benchmark for fundamental discipline.
The core question for Asian allocators is whether Abel can sustain that institutional gravity without Buffett's personal magnetism. Market analysts suggest the underlying investment case remains robust, even if the legendary investor's singular status is impossible to replicate. The early consensus is that the firm's operational scale and capital allocation framework provide a structural advantage that transcends any single individual.
"Buffett’s investment philosophy is universal," said Yang Delong, chief economist at Qianhai Open Source Fund Management, who has attended the Omaha meetings for a decade. Yang noted that Abel's early approach shows clear continuity with the previous era, predicting that "Chinese investors’ attention towards the company will not diminish" as the firm executes its post-Buffett strategy.
