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2026-08-27 · Robert Dyche

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway: Quiet Insider Activity at Their Top 10 Holdings

Berkshire Hathaway's 10 largest equity holdings generated 113 Form 4 filings in the 90 days ending August 27, 2026. Exactly one was an open-market purchase: Occidental Petroleum's new CEO, Richard Jackson, buying $249,853 of stock three weeks into the job. The other 112 — spanning Apple, American Express, Alphabet, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Chevron, Chubb, Moody's, and Kraft Heinz — were routine exercises, sales, and grants.

A Form 4 is the disclosure the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires an insider to file after buying or selling their own company's stock. No executive at any of the ten companies besides Jackson bought stock with personal money in the window.

What Berkshire actually owns right now

Berkshire's most recent 13F-HR — the quarterly disclosure of U.S. equity holdings the SEC requires from institutional investment managers with more than $100 million under management — was filed August 14, 2026 for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. It reports a total 13F equity portfolio of $299.25 billion across 26 distinct positions. The top 10 account for 91% of that value.

Rank Company Ticker Market value % of portfolio Q1 → Q2 2026 change
1 Apple AAPL $65.95B 22.04% Held steady
2 American Express AXP $51.28B 17.14% Held steady
3 Alphabet GOOGL/GOOG $37.76B 12.62% Added — combined position +83.2%
4 Coca-Cola KO $32.51B 10.86% Held steady
5 Bank of America BAC $27.54B 9.20% Reduced −5.9%
6 Chevron CVX $13.99B 4.67% Held steady
7 Occidental Petroleum OXY $12.87B 4.30% Held steady
8 Chubb CB $11.67B 3.90% Held steady
9 Moody's MCO $11.17B 3.73% Held steady
10 Kraft Heinz KHC $7.69B 2.57% Held steady

Source: Berkshire Hathaway 13F-HR, accession 0001193125-26-352200, period ending 2026-06-30, compared against the prior-quarter filing (accession 0001193125-26-226661).

Six of the ten positions had zero share-count change quarter over quarter. The two real moves were a large add to Alphabet — the combined Class A and Class C position grew 83.2% — and a 5.9% trim of Bank of America. Everything else stayed put. That stillness at the position level is the empirical basis for calling the portfolio "quiet"; it also sets up the question this post answers: is anyone with direct knowledge of these ten businesses buying or selling their own stock while Berkshire holds still?

The quiet extends beyond the top 10 in one direction and breaks from it in another. Outside the largest ten positions, the same 13F shows more turnover: Berkshire trimmed Ally Financial and cut Capital One sharply, reduced Kroger, exited Constellation Brands entirely, and opened a small new position in D.R. Horton while adding to Delta, Lennar, Macy's, and the New York Times Company. None of those sit inside the top 10 in dollar terms, which is exactly why the top-10 stillness stands out — the capital Berkshire is actively reallocating is concentrated in smaller, lower-conviction-looking positions, while the largest bets sit untouched.

A leadership note before going further: Greg Abel became Berkshire's CEO at the start of 2026, with Warren Buffett remaining chairman of the board. The Q2 2026 13F reflects decisions made under Abel's tenure.

Methodology

Every figure in this post traces to a specific SEC filing. Berkshire's holdings come from the raw XML of its 13F-HR Information Table, not a rendered summary. Insider activity comes from each company's own Form 4 filing history on EDGAR, filtered to the 90 days ending August 27, 2026, and — critically — filtered again to confirm each filing's issuerCik actually matches the target company. A raw pull of "Form 4s mentioning Bank of America" returns 15 filings; 12 of those are Bank of America or Merrill Lynch appearing as a 10%-owner reporting party on unrelated closed-end funds, not BAC insiders trading BAC stock. The clean count is 3. That distinction matters for anyone building this kind of cross-reference at scale, and it's the same class of data-quality problem 13dwatch's pipeline exists to solve systematically rather than one company at a time.

The insider activity, company by company

Company Clean Form 4s (90 days) Open-market buys Buy $ Sale $
Apple 5 0 $0 $16.47M
American Express 10 0 $0 $5.36M
Alphabet 40 0 $0 $3.94M
Coca-Cola 12 0 $0 $149.47M
Bank of America 3 0 $0 $0
Chevron 20 0 $0 $228.60M
Occidental Petroleum 4 1 $249,853 $0
Chubb 4 0 $0 $13.64M
Moody's 14 0 $0 $2.19M
Kraft Heinz 1 0 $0 $0.43M

Source: individual Form 4 XML filings on SEC EDGAR for each issuer, 2026-05-29 through 2026-08-27, filed under each company's own CIK.

Five findings from that table:

  1. The one buy is a new-CEO purchase, not a conviction bet from a tenured insider. Richard Jackson became Occidental's president and CEO on June 1, 2026, succeeding Vicki Hollub. Three weeks later, on June 23, he bought 4,770 shares at $52.38 — $249,853 — bringing his direct holdings to 444,098 shares. It's the kind of purchase new CEOs are broadly expected to make; the market reads its absence more harshly than its presence.
  2. Chevron and Coca-Cola show the largest dollar-volume sales, and neither is bearish. Chevron's $228.6 million in Form 4 sales is dominated by John Hess, the director who joined Chevron's board after the Hess-Chevron merger and has been liquidating a large merger-derived stake — a one-time unwind, not a signal about Chevron's business. Coca-Cola's $149.5 million is concentrated in repeated exercise-and-sell filings from CFO John Murphy and other officers, consistent with routine equity compensation programs.
  3. Bank of America has the thinnest insider filing activity of any top-10 holding. Only three Form 4s in 90 days, all from CEO Brian Moynihan, all option exercises with shares withheld for taxes — no open-market activity in either direction.
  4. Alphabet's 40 filings are a filing-mechanics artifact, not elevated activity. The volume comes from executives converting Class B shares to Class A ahead of routine 10b5-1 sales, plus scheduled grants. Dollar volume ($3.94 million) is modest relative to the filing count.
  5. Kraft Heinz had exactly one insider filing in 90 days — a single sale by its Global Chief Growth Officer. That's the lowest insider-filing volume of any Berkshire top-10 holding in this window.

The two names worth a second look

Occidental Petroleum. Jackson's purchase is small relative to OXY's market capitalization — roughly a quarter-million dollars against a company worth tens of billions — but the timing does the work. New CEOs are not obligated to buy stock with personal funds in their first month, and many don't; when one does, three weeks into the job, it reads as a deliberate signal to the board and to shareholders rather than a scheduled compensation event. It's also the only transaction in this entire dataset that isn't explained by a 10b5-1 plan, an option exercise, or a routine annual grant. That singularity is the finding, not the dollar amount.

Chevron. The $228.6 million in Form 4 sales at Chevron is the largest dollar figure in the table, and it would be easy to read as a bearish tell. It isn't, mechanically: a large share of it traces to John Hess, who joined Chevron's board as part of the 2025 Hess-Chevron merger and has been liquidating a legacy position built before the deal closed, not making a fresh judgment on Chevron's prospects. CEO Michael Wirth's own filings in the window are ordinary exercise-and-withholding transactions. Treating merger-legacy liquidation the same as a sitting executive selling conviction shares would overstate the signal — a distinction that matters for anyone screening insider-sale dollar totals without checking the transaction codes and the filer's history first.

What this means for hedge fund allocators

None of this is a reason to buy or sell anything. It is a reason to be precise about what "insider signal" means when it's aggregated across a mega-cap portfolio: 113 filings sounds like a lot of activity until it's sorted into what's actually discretionary. At Berkshire's ten largest holdings, discretionary open-market buying in a 90-day window came down to a single new executive making a customary purchase after taking the job. Everything else was the ordinary mechanics of equity compensation — vesting, exercising, withholding, and scheduled director grants — which is worth knowing precisely because it's easy to mistake filing volume for conviction if you don't separate the two.

The more durable takeaway is structural: no existing tracker publishes this specific cross-reference. WhaleWisdom, GuruFocus, and HedgeFollow all track insider trading in Berkshire's own stock — a different and more commonly covered question. Dataroma tracks the 13F holdings but no insider data at all. None of them join Berkshire's portfolio to insider activity at the companies inside it. That join is what 13dwatch's pipeline is built to run continuously, across every institutional filer it tracks — not just once, on request, for one filer.

Get the same cross-reference for the other nine elite portfolio managers 13dwatch tracks — Pershing Square, Baupost, Appaloosa, Third Point, Duquesne, Viking, Tiger Global, Greenlight, and Lone Pine — at 13dwatch.com, or see how their holdings compare in 10 Stocks Held by 5+ Elite Hedge Fund Managers and Bill Ackman's Pershing Square live holdings. The live activist filing feed and full research archive update continuously as new 13D, Form 4, and 13F data hits EDGAR.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Warren Buffett still run Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio?

No. Greg Abel became CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the start of 2026, with Warren Buffett remaining chairman of the board. The Q2 2026 13F reflects decisions made under Abel's tenure, not Buffett's direct day-to-day control.

What are Berkshire Hathaway's top 10 holdings right now?

As of the 13F-HR filed August 14, 2026 for the quarter ended June 30, 2026: Apple (22.04% of the portfolio), American Express (17.14%), Alphabet (12.62%), Coca-Cola (10.86%), Bank of America (9.20%), Chevron (4.67%), Occidental Petroleum (4.30%), Chubb (3.90%), Moody's (3.73%), and Kraft Heinz (2.57%). Together they represent 91% of Berkshire's $299.25 billion 13F portfolio.

Has any insider bought stock at a Berkshire Hathaway holding recently?

Yes, one. Occidental Petroleum CEO Richard Jackson bought $249,853 of OXY stock on June 23, 2026, roughly three weeks after becoming CEO. Across all 113 Form 4 filings at Berkshire's ten largest holdings in the trailing 90 days, it is the only open-market purchase; every other filing was an option exercise, tax-withholding sale, scheduled grant, or program sale.

Is heavy insider selling at Chevron and Coca-Cola a bad sign?

Not necessarily. Chevron's $228.6 million in Form 4 sales is largely attributable to John Hess liquidating a legacy stake built before Chevron's 2025 acquisition of Hess Corporation, not a fresh bearish judgment. Coca-Cola's $149.5 million reflects routine option-exercise-and-sell activity from officers including CFO John Murphy. Both are consistent with scheduled compensation mechanics rather than discretionary conviction trades.

How often does Berkshire Hathaway's 13F holdings data update?

Institutional managers must file a 13F with the SEC within 45 days of each quarter's end. Berkshire's Q2 2026 13F (period ending June 30, 2026) was filed August 14, 2026; its next filing, covering the quarter ending September 30, 2026, is due by mid-November 2026.

Where can I track insider buying across Berkshire's full portfolio and other elite hedge funds?

13dwatch maintains a live, continuously updated database joining 13D/13G activist filings, Form 4 insider transactions, and 13F institutional holdings across Berkshire Hathaway and nine other elite portfolio managers. See the live feed or the full research archive.

Methodology and limitations