Warren Buffett’s conglomerate trims its deficit with a strong June, but tech-fueled markets keep the S&P 500 firmly in the lead.
As the calendar flips past the midpoint of 2026, Berkshire Hathaway is showing signs of life—but the numbers still tell a story of struggle. The conglomerate’s Class B shares are down 1.8% year-to-date, lagging far behind a surging S&P 500 that has climbed 10.7% (or 11.4% with dividends reinvested). That leaves Berkshire trailing the benchmark by a hefty 13.1 percentage points on a total-return basis.
June provided a much-needed reprieve. The stock erased nearly one-third of its 17.5-percentage-point deficit from June 1—the widest margin of underperformance this year. Still, the second quarter (plus the first ten days of July) has been punishing. While Berkshire eked out a modest 3% gain, the tech-heavy S&P 500 rocketed ahead by 16%, completely wiping out what had been a slim 1.8-percentage-point lead for Berkshire at the end of March.
The trend is not new. In 2025, Berkshire underperformed the S&P by 5.5 percentage points excluding dividends, and by 7.0 points when dividends were included. Investors are watching closely to see if the June bounce can gain momentum—or if the tech-driven market will continue to leave the old-guard conglomerate in the dust.
Abel and Weschler spotted at Sun Valley, but buffett stays home
Berkshire’s new leadership duo makes an appearance at the exclusive mogul gathering, while Buffett’s past warnings on AI echo louder than ever.
While Warren Buffett may have skipped this year’s Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel and portfolio manager Ted Weschler are very much in attendance. Though they didn’t make the Forbes feature on the “Billionaire Summer Camp,” they appear on the magazine’s attendee list, and photos from CNBC’s David Grogan and Reuters’ Brendan McDermid confirm their presence among titans like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman.
Buffett, a decades-long regular at the Idaho retreat, has not attended in recent years. But his shadow looms large—especially given his famous 1999 Sun Valley speech, delivered at the height of the dot-com frenzy, in which he warned that while the internet would change the world, investor expectations had become dangerously overheated.
This year, attendees are buzzing about artificial intelligence—a topic Buffett addressed with characteristic candor in his recent annual meeting. In remarks that have resurfaced in Sun Valley conversations, he admitted, “I don’t know anything about AI,” but didn’t dismiss its importance. He drew a sobering parallel to nuclear weapons: “We let the genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons, and that genie has been doing some terrible things lately. And the power of that genie is what scares the hell out of me.”
Buffett recounted a chilling personal experience: seeing a deepfake of himself—his image, his voice, his mannerisms—delivering a message he never spoke. “My wife or my daughter wouldn’t have been able to detect any difference,” he said. He warned that the technology is a dream tool for scammers, calling AI-enabled fraud “the growth industry of all time.” While acknowledging AI’s enormous potential for good, he concluded, “I just don’t know how that plays out.”
For now, Abel and Weschler are the ones mingling in Sun Valley’s exclusive lodges—tasked with steering Berkshire through a market that rewards tech innovation, even as their legendary chairman grapples with its perils from afar.