Warren Buffett made another CNBC splash with an interview with Becky Quick this week, mostly talking about buying more shares of the big Japanese trading houses/industrial conglomerates (Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Itochu, Marubeni and Sumitomo), which are still pretty cheap (PE in the 6-8 range) and have done very well since he first put on those positions. He doesn’t really seem to be distinguishing among them in any way, he essentially bought 5% of each in mid-2020 and they’ve gone up, on average, by about 60-70% since then, while paying growing dividends, so that investment has clearly worked out well… and he recently boosted his stake in each to roughly 7.5%, and visited Japan to signal his support for those companies, and, as future Berkshire CEO Greg Abel put it, to make sure that Mitsui et al know that they can call Berkshire if they ever want to work together to do a big investment, quickly. Berkshire’s portfolio is still very US-centric, though some of the large holdings are obviously multinational (Apple, especially), but now Japan has quietly become the second-largest weighting in Berkshire’s equity portfolio.

Abel sat in on the CNBC interviews (transcript here, worth a read) and contributed quite a lot to the conversation, which is another sign of the gradual transition of the CEO role… I think he spoke more in this interview than I’ve ever heard before, and it was generally reassuring. This is what Warren said of his heir apparent:

“He does all the work, and I take the bows – it’s exactly what I wanted. Greg gets it the same way I get it, but the difference is that he likes to work, and I like to sit around. And I like to allocate capital, and he likes to – he thinks the same way on it as I do, but he also, he likes to meet everybody that’s running the business. And he understands them, and, and he’s probably tougher than I would be in terms of getting things done and everything. And so, it’s improved, it’s already improved dramatically, the management of Berkshire. And we think alike on acquisitions. We think alike on capital allocation. I mean, he’s a big improvement on me, but don’t tell anybody.”

Warren can’t drive anymore, and he speaks a little more slowly and rambles a little more than he used to… but that ...