Charlie Munger ran the equity portfolio now worth about $500 million at Daily Journal, a public legal-services company, for decades—and the company essentially decided to leave it alone after Munger’s death in late 2023.

Berkshire Hathaway may be doing the same thing with most of its roughly $300 billion equity portfolio after Warren Buffett stepped down from the CEO role at the end of 2025. Munger was Berkshire’s vice chairman and a longtime business partner of Buffett, in addition to chairing Daily Journal for decades.

In his inaugural shareholder letter released Saturday morning, Berkshire CEO Greg Abel identified four large Berkshire equity investments— Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Moody’s —and suggested they are forever stocks, or close to it.

Referring to the four companies, Abel wrote they are businesses “we understand well, have a high regard for their leaders, and expect will compound over decades. This concentrated approach will continue, with limited activity in these holdings, though we may significantly adjust a holding if we see fundamental changes in its long-term economic prospects.”

These stocks make up more than half of Berkshire’s equity portfolio, and Abel put Berkshire’s stakes in five Japanese trading companies worth $35 billion in the same bucket. Together, these nine stocks comprise two-thirds of the portfolio.

Abel added that Berkshire had “meaningful positions in a small number of other companies” where “capital allocation has been more dynamic” and that they could become part of Berkshire’s “core holdings.”

It’s notable that two of Berkshire’s top five equity investments, Bank of America and Chevron, didn’t make that core holdings list. Berkshire has cut its holding in Bank of America roughly in half to 517 million shares, worth about $28 billion, in the past 18 months. The Chevron stake totals about $20 billion.

Berkshire has held its Coke and American Express stakes for 40 years or more, and its Moody’s stake for more than 20 years. Those are widely viewed as forever stocks by Berkshire watchers, due in part to a superlow cost basis. Berkshire paid an average of $3 a share for Coke in the late 1980s, compared with the stock’s $81 close, a record, on Friday.

The Apple stake is about a decade old. Buffett has cut it by about 80% from its peak a few years ago to 227 million shares at year-end 2025.

Abel’s statement suggests that the Apple stake won’t be reduced further. Berkshire’s cost basis in its Apple stake is about $27 a share, about a tenth of the current share price of $264. Berkshire’s original cost basis on its stake of one billion shares was around $35 a share, but the company appears to have sold higher-cost-basis stock to reduce its big tax bill from its Apple sales, mostly in 2024.

The day-to-day management of the Berkshire equity portfolio remains unclear based on Abel’s comments in the letter.

Abel wrote that “responsibility ultimately rests with me as CEO.” Abel, however, has no experience as a portfolio manager, and has a full plate running Berkshire’s 50-plus subsidiaries. Buffett has said that lack of formal investment experience doesn’t matter, arguing that if a person can evaluate businesses as well as Abel can, he can pick stocks.

Abel wrote that Buffett would be in the office five days a week and “be available” to consult on capital allocation, including equity investments.

Ted Weschler, who is about 64, has been investment manager at Berkshire since 2012. He and Todd Combs, who left Berkshire in December for an investment position at JPMorgan Chase, had each run an estimated 5% of the equity portfolio, with Buffett handling the rest.

It had been expected that Weschler would play a much greater role with the portfolio after Buffett’s retirement as CEO. But Abel wrote that Weschler would manage 6% of the investments, including a part of what Combs had run—not much changed from what he ran before.

This is a different setup than what Berkshire stated when it hired Weschler in 2011. “After Mr. Buffett no longer serves as CEO, Todd and Ted—possibly aided by one additional manager—will have responsibility for the entire equity and debt portfolio of Berkshire, subject to overall direction by the then-CEO and Board of Directors,” according to the 2011 news release.

Abel wrote in his letter that “equity investments are fundamental to our capital allocation activities.” But it’s not clear who will be making big stock-picking decisions. Some Berkshire watchers think that Abel will de-emphasize equity investing as CEO.

That remains to be seen, but the lack of a day-to-day portfolio manager responsible for the entire portfolio—and Abel’s suggestion about forever stocks—suggest that new equity investments may not be a big future source of value creation at Berkshire.

That would be notable, since Buffett built Berkshire in its early decades from successful stock investments.