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.

The portfolio implication is that Berkshire’s sales are better read as style rotation than fundamental indictment. In both cases, the crowd is likely overfocusing on who sold, not on what changed in the businesses; that creates opportunity to buy quality on governance-driven weakness rather than waiting for a cleaner macro entry.

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.