Warren Buffett officially steps down, closing a six-decade chapter at Berkshire Hathaway

It is the end of an era on both Wall Street and Main Street. Because today is the legendary Warren Buffett’s last day as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. After over six decades of control, the Oracle of Omaha is handing his legacy over to his longtime backup, Greg Abel, who takes over.

The author of this article would like to take this opportunity to say a proper thank you to the greatest investor who ever lived.

Now, as you know, Warren’s career started long before most of the current tech CEOs were even born, and he has become akin to a god on Wall Street.

No one will ever be able to achieve what he has, not only because he is that special, but also because investing has become so easy now that you won’t even get the chance to be Warren.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is his legacy. The fact that he managed to pull off what he has during the hardest era of finance/economics and before the internet is exactly why Google continues to name him the best investor to ever grace NYSE’s trading floor.

Warren bought Burlington Northern, kept Apple stock locked down like national treasure, and somehow remain lifelong besties with one man his entire life while ignoring every flash-in-the-pan trend that came along; crypto included.

Greg Abel officially takes over Berkshire as valuation alarm hits record highs

Greg officially becomes CEO on Wednesday. Warren named him as successor long ago, and he’s been in the background ever since. Now he takes the wheel. Howard Buffett, Warren’s son, described the company’s code last year:

“You do what you say you’re going to do, and you do it when you say you’re going to do it. You’re honest about it. You make mistakes, and you accept responsibility for those mistakes.”

No one’s rewriting Berkshire’s playbook, so Greg is inheriting it as-is, with the same style: buy strong, don’t panic, and shut up unless you’ve got numbers.

And speaking of numbers, the Buffett Indicator, made famous by Warren after a Fortune article he did in 2001 with Carol Loomis, is at 221.4% right now, a 22% surge since April 30 and the biggest since the data started in 1970, and the culprit is [of course] 2025’s AI mania.

The Buffett Indicator works by dividing the Wilshire 5000 Index by the US GDP, and if its high, stocks are getting wild.

Warren didn’t sit it out this year though. His portfolio is still loaded with Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet. He didn’t suddenly turn into a crypto degen, but he didn’t fight the AI wave either. He rode it in silence, letting the profits speak.

Cryptopolitan says goodbye to Berkshire with Bitcoin public letter still unanswered

Now that he’s out, the question’s simple: who’s going to watch the markets the way Warren did? Almost every single person in finance treats him like gospel.

People compare him to Einstein, Edison, and even Mozart. Someone once joked that calling yourself “the next Warren Buffett” is like calling yourself Mozart while looking like Salieri in Amadeus, the guy who listened in awe, knowing he’d never match it.

A $1 million investment in the S&P 500 from 1957 to 2007 would have landed you $166 million. That same amount with Warren gets you $81 billion. How insane is that?

Add another 18 years, and your portfolio would now be worth $428 billion. The author of this article wrote Warren a public letter exactly a year ago, asking him to invest in Bitcoin before retiring, to finish his legacy with crypto. He ghosted us. Classic. I’ve held BRK.B since 2020, but with Warren leaving, I can’t say what happens next.

The certainty is gone. I don’t know what to feel.

Goodbye, Warren.