Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel Is in Clean-Up Mode: 2 Brilliant Stocks He Just Sold

Berkshire Hathaway under Greg Abel has exited Visa and Amazon, likely as part of a portfolio reshuffle following personnel changes rather than a fundamental negative call on the businesses. The article argues both stocks still have strong long-term appeal: Visa posted 17% revenue growth to $11.2 billion and 36% EPS growth to $3.14 in its fiscal Q2 2026, while Amazon is benefiting from AI-driven logistics, accelerating AWS demand, custom chips, advertising growth, and new supply-chain services. The piece is bullish on both names despite Berkshire no longer owning them.

Analysis

The more important signal is not the divestitures themselves, but the governance regime shift: Berkshire is moving from “keep the best compounders unless broken” to a cleaner, more centralized capital-allocation style. That usually lowers portfolio complexity but also raises the bar for legacy holdings that no longer fit the new decision framework. For Visa and Amazon, that creates a short-term “Buffett-removed-the-safety-blanket” overhang, but it does not alter the underlying earnings engines; if anything, it can create a better entry point as passive and headline-driven selling fades.

Visa’s setup is especially asymmetric because its cash-flow sensitivity to nominal spending makes it a hidden inflation hedge. The market tends to value it as a mature financial rail, but the second-order effect is that higher ticket sizes can support growth even when unit volumes normalize, keeping revenue expansion more resilient than many consumer-facing names. The real risk is regulatory: any U.S. antitrust remedy that forces pricing concessions could compress the multiple before it hits the growth rate, making this a months-long legal/valuation catalyst rather than a near-term fundamentals problem.

Amazon has the cleaner multi-year re-rating path. AI-driven warehouse automation, custom silicon, and ad monetization all point to margin expansion layered on top of still-underappreciated revenue durability, which means the stock can compound through earnings quality rather than just top-line growth. The contrarian miss is that consensus still treats Amazon as a “growth-at-any-price” story; the more relevant lens is operating leverage, where even modest efficiency gains at scale can add several turns to forward earnings power over 12-24 months.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long V on weakness over the next 1-3 months; target a re-rating as litigation noise fades and inflation-linked nominal growth supports revenue. Risk/reward favors buying after any post-Berkshire dip, with downside capped by recurring cash flows and dividend support.
• Long AMZN for 6-12 months; use pullbacks tied to AI capex concerns as entry points. The risk/reward is attractive because margin expansion from automation and custom chips can drive earnings acceleration even if revenue growth is only mid-teens.
• Pair trade: long V / short NDAQ or low-quality payment-adjacent names if the market misreads the Berkshire sale as a sector warning. The thesis is that V’s network economics and inflation linkage are stronger, while weaker peers lack the same resilience.
• For event-driven accounts, consider V call spreads 3-6 months out to express upside from normalization in sentiment while limiting exposure to antitrust headline risk. This is preferable to outright stock if you want defined risk around legal timing.
• Do not short BRK.B on the basis of these sales alone; any short would need to be a thesis on succession or capital allocation underperformance over 12+ months, not a reaction trade.