LinuxWebLog.com

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) recently released its 2025 Letter to Shareholders (also see full 2025 Annual Report). Usually, this is when I read Warren Buffett’s teachings and share my personal takeaways (2024, 2023, 2022, etc). Sadly, the time has come when the new CEO, Greg Abel, must take over this duty.

In the letter, Abel does a nice job of listing all the often-unique strengths of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett. Longtime shareholders will be familiar with these attributes, but I suppose it’s good that he repeats them himself.

• Corporate culture built around honesty, transparency, and straightforward communication with shareholders.
• Decentralized structure where subsidiary CEOs operate autonomously with minimal headquarters oversight.
• Strong culture of trust: managers are expected to run their businesses independently and ethically.
• Long-term ownership mindset focused on decades, not quarters.
• Preference for owning high-quality businesses with durable competitive advantages.
• Disciplined capital allocation, including a willingness to hold large cash reserves until attractive opportunities appear.
• Insurance operations provide “float,” which acts as low-cost capital for investments.
• Limited use of leverage and avoidance of excessive financial risk.
• Preference for permanent ownership rather than buying businesses to sell later.

As noticed by @TCII_Blog, Buffett is explicitly listed as someone that will be consulted on any share buybacks in the full annual report:

Berkshire’s common stock repurchase program permits Berkshire to repurchase its Class A and Class B shares at prices below Berkshire’s intrinsic value, as conservatively determined by Berkshire’s Chief Executive Officer after consultation with the Chairman of the Board. We are not committed to a minimum or subject to a maximum repurchase amount. We will not repurchase our stock if it reduces our consolidated cash, cash equivalents and U.S. Treasury Bills holdings to below $30 billion. Financial strength and redundant liquidity will always be of paramount importance at Berkshire. There were no share repurchases in 2025.

No buybacks in 2025, but on 3/5/26, Greg Abel announced that they have started buying back shares again (WSJ gift article). We can only assume that means both he and Buffett agree that BRKB very recently traded below their “estimate of intrinsic value, conservatively determined.”

In addition, Abel also announced that he will be using his entire after-tax annual salary as CEO (currently ~$15 million after-tax/$25 million gross) to purchase Berkshire Hathaway shares. In other words, he will have “skin in the game”.

Abel, who succeeded Buffett as CEO in January, also said in a regulatory filing that he personally bought about $15 million in Berkshire shares and plans to purchase more annually.

“I’m committed to doing this every year,” Abel said during an interview televised on CNBC. “My entire salary, as long as I’m CEO. We’ll file our 10-K, I’ll write the letter, and after the 48-hour cooling-off period, I’ll purchase.”

I’m not a billionaire like Abel, but starting with a $50 bonus from the now-gone ShareBuilder brokerage site in the early 2000s, I’ve built up a nice little position in Berkshire Hathaway. Whenever there is a new brokerage bonus, I prefer to buy BRKB shares because the long-term return will likely at least match the S&P 500, and it never distributes dividends. This means no 1099-DIV forms to deal with at the end of the year, ha. I also never sell the shares, only move them around for ACAT transfer bonuses or they get merged into other brokers, so no 1099-B. This all adds up when you open as many new brokerage accounts as I do…

As a 20+ year shareholder now, I feel that Abel has been saying and doing all the right things so far. Charlie Munger famously said “Greg will keep the culture!”, and so I wish him the best and am holding all my shares for now. In fact, I think it’s quite possible that Berkshire will perform even better price-wise in the next decade as Abel takes a more active role in areas that he likes. Buffett had his strengths and preferences, and Abel has his own.

However, nobody knows what will actually happen, and people can change over time. Look at how many billionaires out there have been corrupted by power and money. I’ll miss the Buffett wisdom, but I’ll still be watching (and hopefully learning) from Berkshire’s activities since I have my own “skin in the game”.

Robinhood is running “HOOD Rewards Season” from 2/19-3/25, which includes the return of some competitive account transfer bonuses. Noteworthy are the 3% total match if you have $10,000 in margin (which you can “create” beforehand) and the 2% match that includes 401k rollovers. However, note that they have very long minimum holding periods where you are stuck at Robinhood (and can’t pursue other opportunities) or they will clawback the bonus. Transfers must be initiated by March 25, 2026 to qualify.

• 2% bonus on ACATS transfers to your Robinhood joint or individual taxable brokerage account from an external brokerage. 5-year minimum hold period + Robinhood Gold ($5/mo or $50/year) membership for a year required.
• 3% total bonus on ACATS transfers (1% extra) with a margin balance of $10,000 or more to your Robinhood joint or individual taxable brokerage account from an external brokerage.
• 2% bonus on ACATS transfers to your Robinhood IRA, including 401k rollovers. 5-year minimum hold period + Robinhood Gold ($5/mo or $50/year) membership for a year required.
• 3% bonus on IRA contributions. This is a standard offer for Robinhood Gold customers, but still worth noting if you are joining the Robinhood ecosystem. 5-year minimum hold period.
• Robinhood will also cover outgoing transfer fees (up to $75) if you transfer $7,500+ in assets.
• 2% bonus on crypto transfers. They are also announcing new products/features on March 4, 2026.

Full terms at Robinhood.com/hoodrewardstransfer.

The 2% bonus on taxable account transfers requires a subscription with Robinhood Gold ($5/mo) and customers must stay subscribed to Gold for 1 year after receiving each Gold match to keep the full Gold match. A 1% match is available to non-Gold customers, no subscription required. The funds that earned the match be kept in the account for at least 5 years to avoid a potential chargeback of the bonus. Transfer must be initiated by March 25,2026 to qualify. Offer only applies to self-directed individual or joint taxable accounts. For more information refer to Hood Season Account Transfer Bonus at robinhood.com/hoodrewardstransfer??

The additional 1% margin bonus is available to all customers who are approved for a margin account and transfer a margin balance of at least $10,000 using ACATS.

If you don’t want to move your money around all the time, I think this is a pretty good promo. If you move over a $100,000 portfolio for 5 years, that’s $3,000. If you move over a $1,000,000 portfolio for 5 years, that’s $30,000. If you have a $100,000 portfolio parked at Merrill Edge, given the upcoming Preferred Rewards changes, compare this bonus against potential cash back. Might be better to take the upfront money than to chase a higher tier. Robinhood now has over $300 billion in assets under custody.

It’s not hard to “create” a $10,000 margin balance by buying some extra SGOV/VBIL in your account right before the ACAT transfer (assuming you have enough equity collateral), do the transfer, and then pay off the margin by selling the SGOV/VBIL right after the transfer is completed. You’ll just pay a little margin interest in the meantime, should be less than $10 as your SGOV/VBIL will earn interest as well (price should increase in interim if no dividend distribution). Robinhood wants investors that use margin, as they tend to be more profitable.

Bilt recently revamped their credit cards, leaving Wells Fargo and switching to Cardless. The good news is that they now give rewards on mortgage payments in addition to rent. The bad news is that they require a lot of non-housing spend for you to “unlock” those rewards. Overall, the program is much more complicated than before, requiring you to carefully juggle housing and non-housing spending amounts on your card to make it barely possible to gain value above a simple 2% cash back card.

Importantly, separate from their original Bilt points, which are great and convert 1:1 to Hyatt points in addition to possible monthly transfer bonuses to other airline programs, they added a new thing confusingly called “Bilt Cash” which is nothing like cash at all.

I decided to convert to the new no-annual-fee Bilt “Blue” credit card as they offered me a “$100 sign-up bonus”, but this bonus turned out to be in Bilt Cash, which I haven’t been able to redeem for anything of value to me.

On March 1st only, Bilt is offering a Rent Day transfer bonus of between 25% to 100% to Japan Airlines. If you pay them $135 in Bilt Cash, they will let you bump up to an increased bonus percentage. So if you are on the base tier like me and only get a 25% transfer bonus to JAL, I could pay them $135 in Bilt Cash and make it a 50% transfer bonus. Possibly a good use of Bilt Cash and a way to use up your points, but again only on March 1st.

I wish I could explain the new program here simply, but I can’t. Personally, I have gone ahead and converted nearly all of my Bilt points to Hyatt, and will wait and see if things get better.