Berkshire’s likely top stock picker: Who he is and how he got there

Ted Weschler, who appears set to become Berkshire Hathaway’s top stockpicker, has had considerable success personally as an investor, turning an IRA account worth about $70,000 in the late 1980s into $221 million by 2018.

Weschler, 64, is a value-oriented investor who joined Berkshire as an investment manager in 2012 and has run an estimated 5% of Berkshire’s $300 billion equity portfolio since then. He had jointly run a $2 billion investment fund, Peninsula Capital, before joining Berkshire.

He personally owns more than $200 million of stock in kidney dialysis provider DaVita and a $15 million interest in Sirius XM Holdings, the satellite radio company, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that detail the holdings of Berkshire and Weschler in those two stocks.

Berkshire hasn’t confirmed what Weschler’s precise role will be in 2026 as Berkshire executive Greg Abel takes over as CEO. But Berkshire said when it hired Weschler as an investment manager that after 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.”

Todd Combs has resigned from Berkshire to take an investment role at JPMorgan Chase, the two companies said earlier in December.

That leaves Weschler with a potentially major role in managing the Berkshire equity portfolio, which is dominated by a handful of stocks: Apple, American Express, Bank of America, Chevron, and Coca-Cola. Berkshire also has many smaller holdings that likely were accumulated by Weschler and Combs, who each ran about 5% of the portfolio.

Weschler didn’t respond to a request for comment. He has said little publicly about his investments since coming to Berkshire, and he hasn’t been on stage at any of Berkshire’s annual meetings.

Buffett hasn’t disclosed his investment performance, though he did tell CNBC in 2019 that Weschler and Combs each were slightly behind the S&P 500 since joining Berkshire.

Both managers likely have lagged behind the market since then. Berkshire owns over $4 billion of DaVita, likely Weschler’s largest investment, and $3 billion of Sirius XM, another big holding seen as linked to him.

DaVita stock is flat over the past five years. Sirius XM is down over 60%, hurt by investor concerns about subscriber losses at Sirius’s core satellite radio business and an aging audience. At around $20, it trades for half its price 10 years ago.

Weschler was first exposed to Buffett’s writings in 1979 as an undergraduate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, when a friend told him to “read anything he writes,” according to a 2022 Weschler interview available on YouTube.

“There was tremendous clarity to what he wrote,” Weschler said. “He has been a hero of mine” since then.

Weschler got to spend time with Buffett, and eventually a job at Berkshire, by purchasing lunches with the CEO auctioned by the San Francisco charity Glide. He paid $2,626,311 at the 2010 auction and then a dollar more in 2011,

After a meal at Piccolo’s, a now defunct Omaha steakhouse, in 2011, an impressed Buffett told Weschler he would be a “good fit” for Berkshire, according to the YouTube interview. Buffett followed up with an offer for a role as an investment manager.

Weschler lives and works in Charlottesville, Va., and spends two to three days a week in Omaha.

Weschler drew attention in 2021 when Allan Sloan, a contributor to Barron’s, wrote for the Washington Post about how Weschler had turned a $70,000 IRA account into $221 million by 2018 through a series of successful investments.

It remains to be seen what roles Weschler, Buffett and Abel will play with the equity portfolio and in capital allocation. The latter is critical because Berkshire is sitting on more than $350 billion of cash.

Buffett has sold almost 75% of Berkshire’s holding in Apple in recent years. But that investment still totals about $65 billion, the largest equity stake held by the company.

It is possible that Berkshire will make minimal changes to the portfolio. That would mirror the current situation at Daily Journal, a small publishing and software company that had been chaired by Charlie Munger, Berkshire’s longtime vice chairman, until not long before Munger’s death at 99 in 2023.

Munger ran the Daily Journal investment portfolio of about $500 million that includes stocks like Wells Fargo, and the company decided to essentially leave the portfolio alone after his death.

Berkshire may say more about the management of the portfolio in the coming weeks. Abel is likely to address it in his first shareholder letter, due around March 1.

Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com