We have three things affecting our market this week:
They Are? Inflation, Trump visiting President Xi in China, May 15 Powell is out and Warsh should be in
Tues & Wed we have CPI, PPI
Some kind of positive news from XI meeting,
Warsh get placed into position we have a hope for a couple of interest rate cuts,
Trading decisions
Earnings –
BABA 5/13 BMO
BIDU 5/18 BMO
MU 6/23 est
NVDA 5/20 AMC
UAA 5/12 BMO
WMT 5/21 AMC
https://www.briefing.com/the-big-picture
The Big Picture
Last Updated: 08-May-26 15:31 ET | Archive
An important risk the stock market isn’t entertaining
Briefing.com Summary:
*Consumer spending remains the economy’s backbone despite record-low sentiment and persistent inflation pressures.
*Slowing real wage growth threatens discretionary spending, earnings growth, and broader economic momentum.
*A resilient labor market is sustaining spending, but the low-hiring environment leaves little margin for error.
The stock market is not the economy. Case in point: the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, Russell 2000, and S&P 400 are all at record highs, yet consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan, is at a record low.
The reality of this situation is that consumers often say something different when answering a survey than what they do in practice. This is borne out in consumer spending data, which lines up better, trend-wise, with the stock market.
Indeed, the stock market is not the economy, but it trades on what it believes about the economy and expected earnings growth. We have covered that fine point extensively in prior columns. We won’t belabor it today, but we will speak today about a risk to the economy that the stock market isn’t entertaining.
The Rub
What if consumers stopped spending? Answer: biggest economic depression ever. That won’t happen. There will always be some kind of spending activity. That doesn’t mean there still can’t be a recession or a depression, but it would take an AI mistake (if you know what I mean) to have consumers stop spending altogether.
The key factor for the economy is the degree to which consumers spend. If they are doing so freely, then the likely connection is that the economy is growing anywhere from solidly to strongly. If they are doing so cautiously, then the economy would likely be growing more slowly or even recessing.
How consumers spend their money also matters, and it also says a lot about where the economy is or where it might be going. In more challenging economic times, consumers spend more on what they need and less on what they want. It is the opposite dynamic in better economic environments.
There are necessities that will get bought in any environment, like food, toilet paper, and toothpaste, but a consumer’s spending dial gets turned up or down based on their disposable income or what is left after paying taxes. That is what drives discretionary spending, which is for the fun stuff like vacations, dining out, and concerts.
Accordingly, when consumers are earning more after inflation, they have the ability and generally the inclination to step up their discretionary spending, which leads to stronger economic growth. And here is the rub. Real earnings—which are adjusted for inflation—are decelerating. This is not a good portent for discretionary spending, assuming this trend persists.
What jumps out in the chart above is that the drop-off in real average hourly earnings has picked up since the start of the Iran war, which has led to an energy price shock. Energy prices aren’t the only thing that have gone up, but their effect has been felt at the headline level for total CPI and total PCE, which include the food and energy costs that always get excluded in core readings but never in monthly budgets for consumers.
One can understand, then, why the market is feeling hopeful that the Iran war and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz will end soon. The market is envisioning some needed relief at the gas pump when oil starts moving freely again through the Strait of Hormuz, leading to price relief for the consumer that will be rebated, so to speak, in their disposable income and allow for a pickup in discretionary spending.
Follow the Leader
What the market is also banking on is a continuation of the strong earnings growth. The massive AI capex can only get a consumer-driven economy so far, and while that capex has fueled the stock market, it is consumer spending that fuels the economy and ultimately earnings growth.
Remember, we’re talking some gargantuan capex budgets that, collectively, are north of $1 trillion, whereas real PCE last quarter for an economy that grew at an annual rate of 2.0% was just shy of $17 trillion.
Where the consumer goes, the economy will follow. If you want an explanation for why consumer spending has held up while consumer sentiment has collapsed, look no further than the low unemployment rate of 4.3%, albeit a lagging indicator. People who are working are people who are spending, no matter how peeved they might be at high gas prices. But if there is less left over each month after inflation to deal with high prices for gas and other things, their spending habits will change.
The timing of tax refunds this year has been well timed to help cushion some of the blow of rising prices for gas and other goods and services, but that offset doesn’t have a permanent shelf life. That is why employment status is key, along with feelings about job security.
Workers anxious about losing a job (and a steady source of income) are apt to be more conscientious about how they spend money. That could mean eating out less, curtailing vacation plans, or refraining from making a big purchase. That is less spending by them and less revenue, all else equal, for the companies that cater to those whims. And if companies aren’t growing sales like they expected, they will look for ways to cut costs to protect profit margins, one of which is to let go employees due to the weaker demand.
Fortunately, it is crystal clear in the weekly initial jobless claims data—a leading indicator—that the labor market is still enjoying a low-firing environment, although it is still a relatively low-hiring environment, too, with the 3-month average for total nonfarm payroll sitting at just 48,000. This is a delicate balance.
Briefing.com Analyst Insight
In the end, the market’s confidence rests on the assumption that the consumer will keep carrying the economy forward. That assumption hasn’t broken yet, but the margin for error is narrowing as real earnings growth decelerates and inflation pressures chip away at disposable income.
The labor market remains the key stabilizing force because employed consumers are spending consumers, yet the combination of a low-hiring environment and slowing real wage growth leaves little room for complacency.
The stock market may continue celebrating AI-driven capex and resilient earnings expectations, but if the consumer eventually starts pulling back in a meaningful way, the economy—and ultimately corporate profit growth—will feel it.
That is why the real risk for the market right now isn’t weak sentiment itself. It is the possibility that deteriorating purchasing power finally changes consumer behavior enough to validate that sentiment and forces the market to entertain the idea that earnings growth won’t be as strong as envisioned. If that happens, there will be some notable risk-adjusted returns for the stock market.
—Patrick J. O’Hare, Briefing.com
Where will our markets end this week?
Higher
DJIA – Bullish
SPX – Bullish
COMP – Bullish
Where Will the SPX end May 2026?
05-11-2026 +0.0%
05-04-2026 -2.5%
Earnings:
Mon: B, MOS, HIMS
Tues: UAA
Wed: BABA, CSCO, JACK
Thur:
Fri:
Econ Reports:
Mon: Existing Home Sales,
Tue: CPI, Core CPI, Treasury Budget,
Wed: MBA, PPI, Core PPI,
Thur: Initial Claims, Continuing Claims, Retail Sales, Retail ex-auto, Imports Export, Business Inventories,
Fri: Empire Manufacturing, Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization,
How am I looking to trade?
Rolled up OTM puts to closer to ATM or slightly OTM
Adding Covered Calls to positions for the summer doldrums
www.myhurleyinvestment.com = Blogsite
info@hurleyinvestments.com = Email
Questions???
The Federal Reserve is quickly running out of reasons to cut interest rates
Published Fri, May 8 20261:40 PM EDT
Updated Mon, May 11 202611:30 AM EDT
Jeff Cox@jeff.cox.7528@JeffCoxCNBCcom
Key Points
- If the Federal Reserve still has any reasons to cut interest rates in the near future, they’re getting harder and harder to find.
- The nonfarm payrolls increase of 115,000 last month is hardly gangbusters, but is another sign that the jobs picture has stabilized. By comparison, there is scant evidence to say the same for inflation.
- Recent data trends could lend credence to the argument that the Fed can continue holding rates where they are while also keeping its options open, including raising rates.
If the Federal Reserve still has any reasons to cut interest rates in the near future, they’re getting harder and harder to find.
Friday’s jobs report for April provided the latest evidence that the central bank’s larger concern isn’t a flagging labor market but rather a cost of living that is getting increasingly harder for ordinary Americans to bear.
The nonfarm payrolls increase of 115,000 last month is hardly gangbusters, but is another sign that the jobs picture has stabilized at least enough to reduce the pressure for rate cuts.
By comparison, there is scant evidence to say the same for inflation, likely pushing the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee into a more hawkish posture where officials are comfortable staying where they are for a prolonged period.
“The Fed will shift its focus to containing upside inflation risks now that the labor market appears back on track,” said Lindsay Rosner, head of multisector fixed income at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. “The FOMC could well feel compelled to remove the easing bias from its next post-meeting statement in June, which would suggest the hawks are gaining the upper hand on the committee for the time being.”
In Fed terms, that means that a swell of cautious sentiment from multiple regional presidents could take further hold.
At last week’s FOMC meeting, three of those presidents voted against the post-meeting statement. The group did not object to the committee’s decision to hold rates steady but rather to “forward guidance” language widely interpreted as signaling the next move would more likely be a cut.
Facing inflation
“I have never been that big of a fan of trying to use words to jawbone policy decisions,” Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chicago Fed, said Friday in a CNBC interview. Moreover, he said he is concerned about current inflation trends.
“We’ve been above the 2% fed target for five years now. We stopped making progress last year, and now the last three months, it’s going up instead of down,” added Goolsbee, who does not get a vote this year on the committee but will in 2027. “We’ve got to just keep an eye on this, because if everybody starts presuming that inflation rates are going back to something like what they were a few years ago, we would be in a in a bit of a pickle as a central bank.”
Goolsbee further argued that inflation pressure is coming from more than just gasoline and tariffs, and is increasingly showing up in services costs. The consumer price index for March pointed to an inflation rate of 3.3%, well above the Fed’s 2% goal.
The traditional approach to higher inflation and a steady labor market normally would argue against cuts.
Recent data trends could lend credence to the argument that the Fed can continue holding rates where they are while also keeping its options open, including raising rates.
“This makes it more and more clear that the Fed [can have] all the patience in the world,” said Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman. “There’s nothing on the economic front that’s requiring them to lower interest rates any further.”
Trouble for Warsh
While market sentiment can shift rapidly, traders have removed any probability of a rate cut essentially through April 2031, according to fed funds futures pricing. In fact, the rate curve implies a much stronger chance of hikes in coming years.
“Obviously it makes the Fed’s decision easier,” Dan North, senior economist for North America at Allianz, said of the recent data. “This just makes the decision that much easier to hold, and maybe in the next year, start leaning the bias the other way.”
If that’s the case, though, it makes things problematic for incoming Chair Kevin Warsh, who President Donald Trump sent to the Fed with expectations for lower rates.
The former Fed governor has been open about his preference for a lower funds rate, arguing that the Fed still can control inflation while easing policy. Warsh has advocated for an approach that focuses more on the central bank’s $6.7 trillion balance sheet rather than the overnight funds rate currently used as the main policy tool.
However, selling a rate cut with inflation north of 3% will be a difficult job, particularly considering the leanings of the current committee structure.
“He has really got his hands full on this. Certainly he was chosen by Trump because he is probably leaning towards lower interest rates,” North at Allianz said. “Warsh comes in, saying, ‘Gosh, I think it’d be great if we had a family fight once in a while.’ Well, I don’t think this was the fight he was expecting.”
Replacing Warren Buffett: Four Things Greg Abel Got Right In His First 10 Minutes
Senior Contributor.
Harvard instructor and bestselling author on leadership communication.
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May 04, 2026, 05:30am EDTMay 04, 2026, 03:41pm EDT
Greg Abel’s first 10 minutes in the spotlight as Berkshire Hathaway’s new CEO and Warren Buffett’s successor offer a playbook any leader can follow to win trust in a transition.
Abel took to the stage on Saturday to kick off the now legendary annual conference that made Buffett an investing icon. It was the first Berkshire shareholders’ meeting without Buffett taking questions on the main stage.
It wasn’t Abel’s first meeting—he’s been seated next to Buffett for the better part of a decade, walking shareholders through Berkshire’s non-insurance business operations. This time, it was Abel’s first opportunity to build trust and confidence among Berkshire’s hundreds of thousands of shareholders.
Most leaders won’t replace an icon like Warren Buffett. But almost every leader, by definition, will walk into a room as the new person in charge. Abel understood the stakes and knew what he had to do.
In the first t10 minutes of the conference, Abel made four smart moves that provide a template for a high-stakes handoff.
1. Talk to stakeholders as owners, not observers.
After saying “Good morning,” Abel’s very next sentence made it clear that he’d be adopting Buffett’s philosophy and language. “I want to welcome all our owners,” he said. He even called the gathering “owner’s day.”
Buffett has long reminded shareholders to think of themselves as “long-term owners,” and not traders who go in and out of stocks to make a quick profit. When leaders talk about stakeholders as partners or owners, they’re inviting the audience to play a starring role in the company’s story.
2. Use symbols to honor the past.
Abel surprised Warren Buffett, who was sitting in the audience, by “retiring” a giant jersey with Buffett’s name on the back and the number 60. It was lifted to the rafters alongside Charlie Munger’s jersey with the number 45, representing the number of years the two partners served as Berkshire’s leaders.
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They weren’t real jerseys, of course, but the symbolism was clear. Retiring a jersey in sports means no one wears the jersey again. At Berkshire, the jerseys served as a symbol that the Buffett and Munger era will always be honored and never forgotten.
3. Let the legend pass the torch.
In one of the most notable exchanges, Abel introduced Buffett, who, instead of sitting on the stage, was watching from the front row.
Buffett took the microphone and said, “Greg is doing everything I did—and then some. And he’s doing it better in all cases.” He added that the board’s decision to make Abel his replacement was “100 percent successful.”
Buffett didn’t end there. He, in turn, introduced Apple CEO Tim Cook, who recently announced his retirement. First, he explained that, under Cook’s management, Berkshire’s investment in Apple grew from $35 billion to $185 billion. Buffett then reminded the audience that Cook, too, was largely unknown to the broader business community when he replaced another legend, Steve Jobs.
Without saying a word, Abel inherited the trust and confidence Buffett had built with his shareholders. What he did next was all class.
4. Anchor yourself in the company’s values.
Abel didn’t start talking about himself after Buffett’s setup. Instead, he showed a video clip he called the start of “Berkshire’s Anthem.”
The video showed Buffett testifying before Congress in 1991. A scandal had damaged the reputation of one of Berkshire’s financial companies—Salomon Brothers investment bank. Buffett had stepped in as the interim CEO. Even though he wasn’t involved, Buffett apologized to lawmakers and the public. He then delivered the line that Abel said would be Berkshire’s anthem, it’s North Star.
Buffett issued the following directive, aimed at Salomon’s employees: “Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.”
Once again, without saying it directly, Abel reminded Berkshire’s owners that he would not rewrite the company’s moral code. Instead, he would enforce it.
You might not be following a legend, but you’ll likely step into another person’s story at some point in your career. Build trust, not by rewriting the story, but by embracing its best parts.
Michael Burry says the market today feels like ‘the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble’
Published Fri, May 8 20261:35 PM EDT
Updated Fri, May 8 20262:54 PM EDT
Key Points
- Michael Burry, best known for predicting the U.S. housing crash, said stocks are no longer reacting logically to economic data.
- “Stocks are not up or down because of jobs or consumer sentiment,” Burry wrote. “Feeling like the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble.”
- Burry compared the recent trajectory of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index with the run-up that preceded the collapse of technology stocks in March 2000.
Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame is warning that the stock market’s fixation on artificial intelligence is beginning to resemble the final stages of the dot-com bubble.
“Absolutely non-stop AI. Nobody is talking about anything else all day,” Burry wrote Friday in a Substack post after listening to financial television and radio coverage during a long drive.
The investor, best known for predicting the U.S. housing crash, said stocks are no longer reacting meaningfully to economic data such as jobs reports or consumer sentiment in a logical way. The S&P 500 rose to a fresh record high Friday as traders focused on a slightly better-than-expected April jobs report rather than a record low reading in consumer sentiment.
“Stocks are not up or down because of jobs or consumer sentiment,” Burry wrote. “They are going straight up because they have been going straight up. On a two letter thesis that everyone thinks they understand. … Feeling like the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble.”
Burry compared the recent trajectory of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) with the run-up that preceded the collapse of technology stocks in March 2000. The index is up more than 10% this week, pushing its 2026 gains to 65%.
The comments come as investors have poured into AI-linked shares over the past two years, helping propel major U.S. equity indexes to repeated record highs. Semiconductor companies and megacap technology firms tied to AI infrastructure and software have led the rally, with enthusiasm around generative AI fueling sharp gains in valuations.
Paul Tudor Jones has also drawn parallels between today’s AI-fueled rally and the period leading up to the dot-com bust, though he believes the bull market may still have further to run. Jones told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week the current environment feels similar to 1999 — roughly a year before technology shares peaked in early 2000 — and estimated the rally could continue for another year or two.
At the same time, Jones cautioned that the eventual correction could be dramatic if valuations continue to expand.
“Just imagine the stock market went up another 40%,” Jones said. “The stock market GDP is going to probably be good lord 300%, 350%. You just know that there’ll be some … breathtaking kind of corrections.”
Nvidia embraces role of AI investor, pushing past $40 billion in equity bets this year
Published Sat, May 9 20268:00 AM EDTUpdated Sun, May 10 20266:57 PM EDT
Kristina Partsinevelos@KristinaParts
Ashley Capoot@/in/ashley-capoot/
Key Points
- This week Nvidia agreed to invest up to $3.2 billion in glass maker Corning and signed a deal for the right to invest up to $2.1 billion in data center operator IREN.
- It’s part of the company’s aggressive strategy to take stakes in companies up and down the AI infrastructure stack while also doing commercial deals with them.
- Matthew Bryson, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note that Nvidia’s dealmaking fits “squarely into the circular investment theme.”
Nvidia stepped on the gas last year, putting cash into companies up and down the AI infrastructure stack and helping to fund businesses that could turn around and buy the chipmaker’s technology. It’s been a lucrative endeavor, as the company’s $5 billion bet on Intel is now worth over $25 billion, a historic return in a matter of months.
In 2026, the pace of deals has kicked into overdrive, with Nvidia already topping $40 billion in commitments and expanding its portfolio to include more public equities.
This week alone Nvidia forged an agreement with data center operator IREN, giving it the right to invest up to $2.1 billion in the company, a day after Nvidia struck a pact with Corning, allowing it to invest up to $3.2 billion in the 175-year-old glass maker. Shares of IREN and Corning popped on the announcements.
Nvidia has been the biggest winner of the artificial intelligence boom, producing the graphics processing units required to train AI models and run large workloads. The global scramble to secure GPUs has lifted Nvidia’s stock by more than 11-fold in four years, propelling the company to a roughly $5.2 trillion market cap and making it the most valuable business in the world.
To help the company grow its dominance beyond chips, Nvidia is financing the entire AI supply chain, ensuring it runs on Nvidia hardware and that there’s sufficient capacity to meet demand. But there’s growing concern in some corners of AI that Nvidia — like cloud providers Google and Amazon — is investing in other companies as a way to fuel its own growth.
Nvidia, which generated $97 billion in free cash flow last fiscal year, is backing some of the very companies that buy its chips and, in some cases, is leasing compute right back to them. Critics have compared it to the vendor financing that helped inflate the dot-com bubble.
Nvidia goes on investing spree to bolster supply chain empire
Matthew Bryson, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note that Nvidia’s investments and buildouts fit “squarely into the circular investment theme” that’s been driving fears around the market’s durability. However, Bryson sees the investments as underscoring Nvidia’s vision and creating a “competitive moat” if the company can execute.
An Nvidia spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Nvidia has signed at least seven multibillion-dollar investments this year with publicly traded companies. Additionally, it’s been part of roughly two dozen investment rounds in private companies, including some relatively early-stage deals, according to FactSet.
‘We don’t pick winners’
Its single largest bet was a $30 billion check for ChatGPT creator and longtime partner OpenAI. Nvidia also participated in massive funding rounds for Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, shortly before it merged with SpaceX in February.
“There are so many great, amazing foundation model companies, and we try to invest in all of them,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during an April podcast appearance. “We don’t pick winners. We need to support everyone.”
With Nvidia’s earnings report for its fiscal first quarter less than two weeks away, shareholders will get a clearer picture of the size of the company’s expanding portfolio and its impact on financials.
During the last fiscal year, Nvidia invested $17.5 billion in private companies and infrastructure funds, “primarily to support early-stage startups,” according to its annual filing with the SEC. The company said those investments include AI model companies that purchase its products directly or through cloud service providers.
Non-marketable equity securities (which are private company investments) held on Nvidia’s balance sheet swelled to $22.25 billion at the end of January from $3.39 billion a year earlier. The company reported gains on those assets as well as publicly held equities of $8.92 billion, up from $1.03 billion in the prior fiscal year, in part due its investment in Intel, which has turned into a stock market darling this year, up well over 200%.
On Nvidia’s last earnings call in February, Huang said, “Our investments are focused very squarely, strategically on expanding and deepening our ecosystem reach.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Corning partnership will ‘revitalize American manufacturing’
The IREN deal this week includes an agreement that the data center company will deploy up to 5 gigawatts of Nvidia’s DSX-branded infrastructure designs intended to power AI workloads at facilities across the globe.
As part of the Corning deal, the glass company is building three new U.S. facilities dedicated to optical technologies for Nvidia, which will likely be turning to fiber-optic cables instead of copper as it builds out its rack-scale systems.
In March, Nvidia invested $2 billion in Marvell Technology as part of a strategic partnership to work on silicon photonics technology. That month it put the same amount in Lumentum and Coherent, two companies developing photonics technologies.
Then there are the so-called neoclouds. In January, Nvidia invested $2 billion in CoreWeave in a deal that involves building out data centers with Nvidia’s technology. It also invested $2 billion in Nebius Group, an AI cloud company, as part of an agreement on AI infrastructure deployment, fleet management, inference and AI factory design.
Chip analyst Jordan Klein at Mizuho called the deals with component makers “super smart by the CFO and team and a great use of cash,” because they help accelerate the development of critical technology and products that are in short supply. He’s more skeptical of the neocloud investments, which he said “feel more questionable to me and likely investors.”
“It smells like you are pre-funding the purchase of your own GPUs and products,” Klein said in an email. Still, he noted that the cloud providers have critical attributes like power and data center capacity that Nvidia needs.
Ben Bajarin at Creative Strategies shared a similar sentiment regarding IREN, telling CNBC, “The risk is that if the cycle turns, the market starts questioning how much of the demand was organic versus supported by Nvidia’s own balance sheet.”
As much as Nvidia is funneling money into publicly traded partners, those wagers are dwarfed by the chipmaker’s investment in OpenAI.
The $30 billion Nvidia pumped into OpenAI in late February came more than a decade after the companies started working together, though they’ve grown increasingly intertwined since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, the moment that sparked the generative AI frenzy.
Nvidia’s investment in OpenAI was originally going to be much bigger. In September, the companies said Nvidia would be putting in up to $100 billion over time into OpenAI as the AI company deployed 10 gigawatt’s of Nvidia’s systems. That deal never got off the ground as OpenAI pivoted away from developing data centers, instead leaning heavily on partners like Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon to piece together as much capacity as possible.
Huang said in March that investing $100 billion in OpenAI is probably “not in the cards,” and that the $30 billion deal “might be the last time” it writes a check before an IPO that could take place this year.
Berkshire annual meeting recap: Buffett says investing environment not ideal, sees ‘gambling’ in markets
Berkshire Hathaway hosted its 2026 annual meeting — its first since Warren Buffett passed the baton as CEO to Greg Abel at the start of the year. Review all the day’s news and analysis here.
In his first annual meeting as CEO, Berkshire Hathaway’s Greg Abel discussed a wide array of topics from artificial intelligence to his efforts to grow the conglomerate.
Abel said the Omaha-based firm was thinking criticially about how to use AI to add value, saying that Berkshire wasn’t “going to do AI for the sake of AI.” Abel also walked through efforts to improve its railway and insurance businesses at the event, which has long been called “Woodstock for Capitalists.”
Abel was joined on stage by members of his leadership team, but chairman Warren Buffett made remarks from the audience. Abel celebrated his predecessor by hanging a jersey from the rafters of the CHI Health Center, where the event is held each year. A deepfake version of Buffett also asked a question, prompting a discussion on the cybersecurity risks tied to AI.
In a special sideline interview, Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick that he did not see the ideal investing environment. Ahead of the meeting, Berkshire’s latest financial report showed a record cash pile nearing $400 billion.
Abel doesn’t see a single successor to Charlie Munger as his top adviser
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Abel responds to ‘who would serve as the Charlie for Greg’
Asked who will play the Charlie Munger to his Warren Buffett, new CEO Greg Abel didn’t name a single person but talked about the team that surrounds him.
“You surround yourself with great people, and they’re already here,” he said.
Abel mentioned Adam Johnson, who serves as president of Berkshire’s consumer products, service, and retailing businesses and leads NetJets. He also mentioned Ajit Jain, vice chairman of insurance operations, and Katie Farmer, the CEO of BNSF Railway. All three of these executive spent some time on stage with Abel on Saturday.
“Across our CEOs, we’re so fortunate to have a great group that I would reach out to any of them on a specific circumstance and ask them for their input,” Abel said.
Wall Street has found a new quantum computing play. Analysts see as much as 75% upside
Published Tue, Apr 14 20261:32 PM EDT
Infleqtion is generating revenue and scaling up its business, making it one of the hottest new quantum computing plays on the Street, according to a pair of recent analyst notes.
On Monday, Citi assigned a buy rating to Infleqtion, putting a $20 price target on shares that suggests nearly 59% upside. The move follows BTIG initiating coverage last week of the stock with a buy rating and a $22 price target that implies shares could soar almost 75%.
“The overlap between quantum sensing and quantum computing has allowed Infleqtion to generate revenue and evolve as a company, all the while advancing its technology, as the market for quantum computing develops and scales,” Citi analyst Atif Malik said Monday in a note to clients.
He added, “we believe the company’s success stems from the application of the same neutral atom technology across its portfolio, a similar approach to Nvidia.”
Infleqtion, founded in 2007, builds quantum computers, precision sensors and software. These products serve a client base that includes governments, corporations and research institutions.
The company is unique among its peers because it is “one of few public quantum compute companies generating revenue today,” BTIG analyst Jesse Sobelson said in a Friday note to clients.
The analyst noted that the company’s neutral atom platform addresses both the $130 billion quantum computing and $30 billion quantum sensing industries.
Infleqtion has also forged partnerships with artificial intelligence chip darling Nvidia.
Under an partnership announced last year, Infleqtion aims to integrate its Sqale neutral atom quantum processors with Nvidia’s graphics processing unit-accelerated supercomputers.
“We view Infleqtion’s ongoing partnership with Nvidia as a key validation of technology and suggests their software solutions are well positioned to address current AI use cases as well as future AI and quantum applications,” Citi’s Malik wrote.
In addition, Infleqtion has also delivered two Sqale quantum computers: one to Japan’s Institute for Molecular Science and another to the United Kingdom’s National Quantum Computing Centre.
Shares are down 15% in 2026 vastly underperforming the overall market.
