Berkshire Hold, Vistra Buy, and five SA shares to Accumulate – Ricardo week to 13 November

Hand-picked successor, Greg Abel, has finally started spending. Berkshire bought back nearly $10 billion of its own shares in the three months to end September. That's the most in a single quarter for many years. And it takes the share buyback number to 14.5 billion for 2026 so far. Reports say that Berkshire made another $2 billion in buybacks during October. And as a result,

The company's share count is down by just over 1% in a year. Think about what that means. Warren Buffett's rule was very simple: only buy back your own shares when they trade below what a conservative person would call intrinsic value. Greg Abel is following that rule. So he's telling us, with nearly $10 billion of real money, that he thinks Berkshire's shares.

Are cheap, and he's doing it while the share price sits near record highs. We'll be returning to the story of share buybacks later in this episode when we get to the part about South African stocks. But back to Berkshire. When you add the acquisitions this year, Oxychem from Occidental for $9.4 billion and the home builder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion, a picture.