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What Buffett’s Exit Means

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What Buffett’s Exit Means

It was closing in on 1 p.m. when Warren Buffett, seated onstage before a rapt audience of about 40,000 at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, said that he was getting a “5-minute warning.”

To most of those there for the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, his company, it was simply a signal that the gathering — known as Woodstock for capitalists — was drawing to a close. No one knew that something historic was about to happen.

After 60 years of running the company he has called his painting, the 94-year-old Buffett said that he planned to step down as chief executive at year end. (Proving how much freedom he has always exercised at Berkshire, he surprised his own board and Greg Abel, his handpicked successor: “I want to spring that on the directors,” he said with a smile.)

People in the crowd, many of whom were in tears, rose from their seats in a standing ovation for a singular figure in the business world.

Buffett is often described as a symbol of American capitalism. The truth is that he has always been an outlier. He is more the conscience of capitalism, willing to speak uncomfortable truths about the system’s ills while others remained silent. (His public comments on issues like tariffs over the weekend are a prime example.)

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The billionaire always comes across as a gentleman, and in an age of distrust he became someone people could trust. Fellow business moguls and government officials admired him because of his success, yes — Berkshire reported $89 billion in net profit last year, and it is one of the biggest buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds — but also because he didn’t appear to have changed despite his wealth. He lives in a modest house in Omaha, and for years drove his own car, including to the drive-through at McDonald’s.

Buffett isn’t perfect, something he often acknowledges, and he has urged his followers to stay humble as he discussed his own investing mistakes and misses. But that also got to one of his biggest accomplishments, using his annual Berkshire letters and marathon Q. and A. sessions with shareholders to educate generations about business, investing and life itself.

After the announcement, I was struck by a social media post from someone I wouldn’t have normally considered to be a Berkshire watcher, who perfectly encapsulated the importance of Buffett and his longtime business partner, the late Charlie Munger. “They were the good investors, dealers in reality, patient,” wrote Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker. “When the history of the rise and fall of America is written, one of the chapters will begin in Omaha, with their departure.”

As Buffett prepares to depart, the big question is: What will happen to his masterpiece once it passes to Abel?

It has been apparent for several years now that on a day-to-day basis, Abel is already running large swaths of Berkshire’s operations, so the shift likely won’t be dramatic. But the scrutiny of “Abel’s Berkshire” will undoubtedly increase: The company wasn’t built just as a collection of disparate businesses, but as the vision of one man.

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Abel has said he will seek to maintain the culture that his boss meticulously built. But things will inevitably become different. Berkshire’s board gave Buffett an unparalleled degree of autonomy to operate as he saw fit, often learning about significant deals he had struck only after the fact.

Abel will have to work hard to earn even some of that latitude, and under him Berkshire is likely to operate with more guardrails. But there is speculation that Buffett will remain chairman for some period, which could afford Abel more freedom as he grows into the top job.

Nevertheless, Buffett’s success, and the company he built, were exceptional. What investors gathered in Omaha this weekend, and the world over, want to know is what comes next.

Markets brace for central banks and a busy earnings week. On Wednesday, the Fed is widely expected to again hold interest rates steady, potentially further irritating President Trump (though he seems to be backing off calls to fire Jay Powell, the Fed chair). Big companies are also set to report results, with investors focusing on further fallout from the trade war: Ford announces on Monday; Disney, Uber and Novo Nordisk on Wednesday; and Toyota, AB InBev and Shopify on Thursday.

Stocks look set to snap a nine-day winning streak. S&P 500 futures are down, with energy stocks in particular looking weak. Oil prices have fallen roughly 2 percent on Monday — West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, is trading around $56.60, well below most domestic drillers’ break-even price — after the OPEC Plus cartel shifted course on Saturday and said it would increase production.

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Shell’s shares jump on a report that it’s weighing a bid for BP. The oil giant’s advisers are evaluating a takeover of the struggling BP, Bloomberg reports, and could pounce if oil prices (and its rival’s stock) fall further. The fate of BP has become a much-discussed issue, with Wall Street analysts seeing it as a prime acquisition target as it pursues a turnaround plan under pressure from the activist investor Elliott Investment Management.

Betting on papal elections may be older than the Sistine Chapel. This week’s conclave involves a new twist: It’s the first time that major online prediction markets have turned their focus on the Vatican’s ancient selection process.

And the wagers are flowing in. The Italian cardinal Pietro Parolin has emerged as the odds-on favorite to succeed Pope Francis, according to the prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi. Even a report last week that the 70-year-old had medical issues, which the Vatican denied, did little to dent that lead.

But while prediction markets claimed vindication in correctly predicting President Trump’s victory in November, picking the next heir to Saint Peter’s throne is likely to be a tougher challenge, experts both inside the Vatican — known as the “vaticanisti” — and outside tell Bernhard Warner and Michael de la Merced.

The wisdom of crowds can likely go only so far. High-tech betting sites “will never be able to break through the complexity, the unpredictability of the decisions made inside,” Franca Giansoldati, a Vatican specialist who writes for Il Messaggero, one of Italy’s biggest daily newspapers, said.

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Rajiv Sethi, an economist at Barnard College who has studied prediction markets, noted that when it came to the presidential election, bettors were able to process a wide variety of information sources, including public polls and televised debates. The papal conclave — famously conducted behind closed doors and composed of an expected 133 cardinal electors sworn to secrecy — offers far fewer clues for gamblers.

Consider that a spike in the Polymarket contract betting that a new pope would be picked in 2025 took place after Francis’ death was announced, according to Sethi. Were there inside trading, someone could have made a lot of money. “We can rule out information leakage from cardinals,” Sethi said.

Conclave politics have been highly unpredictable. In 2013, the odds-on favorite was Cardinal Angelo Scola; then-Cardinal Jose Maria Bergoglio, who became Francis, was on few short lists. There are also unexpected developments, most recently when Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was forced to resign his positions after a financial scandal, briefly sought to crash the upcoming conclave.

Again this time, the cardinals are divided, and many are meeting for the first time — factors that could complicate how long it takes before white smoke emerges from the Sistine Chapel.

Then there are other potential wild cards, including President Trump’s policies (which Francis frequently criticized), Giansoldati noted. Could cardinals even be influenced by a Trump social media post depicting himself in papal vestments? Analysts have seen a kind of Trump effect energizing national elections around the world already this year.

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All that is unlikely to deter online bettors. Kalshi’s main contract on who the next pope will be currently has about $5 million in wager volume. “So far, the papal election market is tracking to be as big as the Super Bowl,” which saw $27 million in volume, Jack Such, a spokesman for the prediction market, told DealBook.


Marc Elias, a prominent lawyer for the Democratic Party whom President Trump has targeted by name in his campaign against big law firms, on “60 Minutes.” Trump drew further concern when, during an interview on “Meet the Press” that aired on Sunday, he repeatedly said “I don’t know” when asked if he needed to uphold the Constitution and guarantee the right of due process.


Shares in Netflix were down more than 4 percent in premarket trading this morning as investors weigh President Trump’s latest tariff target: films made overseas.

Never mind that Hollywood has a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world, and that it’s difficult to define how much of a major film is actually produced outside the United States. The proposal, which involves a 100 percent levy on such films, could scramble the economics for major studios and streaming services.

Elsewhere in tariff news:

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  • Trump said on Air Force Once that he has no plans to speak with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, this week as the trade talks between the two stall. But he reiterated that he is willing to lower the levies that have hit commerce between the two countries.

  • Many of the corporate promises to invest big in America, which the White House has said amount to “trillions of dollars in new investment,” are wildly overblown, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.


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Amazon delivery companies lay off more than 150 people in the San Francisco Bay Area

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Amazon delivery companies lay off more than 150 people in the San Francisco Bay Area

Two Amazon delivery service partners are shutting offices and laying off hundreds.

Xpress Delivery, located in Oakland, will be laying off 80 employees. OnPoint Logistics will be ceasing operations at its San Francisco location and cutting 96 jobs, according to a government filing.

Amazon delivery service partners are independent businesses that partner with Amazon to deliver packages from a local fulfillment center to the delivery station using Amazon delivery vans and provided devices.

In January, Amazon announced it would cut 16,000 jobs from its workforce and announced additional layoffs in May in its selling partner services team.

These are only joining a growing list of layoffs across California’s tech and business hubs. LinkedIn, Cisco, Meta, and Oracle have all announced layoffs this year. Both LinkedIn and Cisco cut around 5% of their workforce overall, with hundreds of those layoffs occurring in California. Meta and Oracle slashed over 10% of their workforces in favor of implementing AI into its operations.

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Both OnPoint and Xpress delivery stations will permanently cease operations, and no replacement companies have been announced yet to operate there.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

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Netflix is the king of streaming. So why is its stock down this year?

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Netflix is the king of streaming. So why is its stock down this year?

Netflix has long been seen as the winner in the streaming wars, with more than 325 million subscribers globally and hits like “Stranger Things” and “KPop Demon Hunters.”

For months, Netflix had been telling investors how it planned to scale its business to new heights by acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, a potentially transformative media deal.

But after the streaming giant passed on buying the media company in February, Netflix has faced persistent questions from investors about its plans for staying on top.

Reflecting the investor unease, Netflix’s stock price, which closed Tuesday at $73.68 a share, has declined 21% this year and is down 42% from a year ago.

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“Obviously, they have a very successful business,” said Ross Benes, a senior analyst at research firm eMarketer, adding that most of Netflix’s revenue comes from its subscriptions. “Your investors always want to just see more and more and more, and they mostly provide that one thing.”

Part of the reason investors are anxious is that Netflix’s share of TV viewing time in the U.S. has steadily declined in recent months as rival YouTube has gained market share, according to Nielsen data.

Netflix represented 7.8% of all TV viewing in the U.S. in April — the lowest percentage since May 2025. It was 7.5% in April 2025, Nielsen said.

By comparison, YouTube has seen its share of the streaming audience go up. YouTube’s TV viewing share in April rose to 13.4%, up from 12.4% a year earlier, Nielsen said.

Some investors fear that if viewership is down, subscribers could cancel the service, which would negatively affect the platform’s growing advertising business. It could also undercut Netflix’s ability to raise prices in countries like the U.S.

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Despite the investor jitters, equity analysts estimate Netflix will have a strong second quarter, with revenue increasing 14% to $12.58 billion and net income rising 8% to nearly $3.38 billion, according to FactSet. One reason is continued growth in its advertising business and the popularity of new programming such as crime series “I Will Find You.”

Netflix will release its second quarter earnings results on Thursday. The company declined to comment for this story.

Netflix has noted that it has a low churn rate compared to competitors. The company said it has a long runway for growth, penetrating only about 5% of global TV viewing, according to a letter to shareholders in April. A number of its shows and movies appear on Nielsen’s most-watched streaming lists.

Among the company’s key priorities are broadening its entertainment offerings in areas such as live programming, games and video podcasts as well as growing its advertising business.

“A measure of our performance is engagement, which is not just the quantity of hours watched, but also the quality of that experience for our audiences,” Netflix said in its April letter, adding that its primary internal quality metric reached an all-time high in the first quarter.

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“We believe we have meaningful advantages as we strive to become a must‑have service for consumers: a strong global brand, a wide range of high‑quality programming, a best‑in‑class product experience, and a frequent role at the center of culture,” Netflix said in its April letter.

Several equity analysts believe the Los Gatos-based company is still growing and remain bullish on the stock.

The last time Netflix came under major scrutiny from investors was in 2022, when it reported subscriber declines in the first quarter of that year. That pushed Netflix into pursuing other initiatives including selling cheaper subscriptions with ads, cracking down on password sharing and offering games on its service.

Last year, Netflix said it generated more than $1.5 billion in advertising and expects to roughly double that to $3 billion this year.

“We believe this is a long-term growth company,” said Jessica Reif Ehrlich, senior media and entertainment analyst at BofA Securities, who has a buy rating on the stock.

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As part of its diversification, Netflix has expanded its portfolio of live programming over the years, including adding NFL games and streaming Major League Baseball’s opening day game.

But some analysts say Netflix needs to have a larger share of live sports content to draw sports fans into subscribing.

“They’re getting a lot of casual sports fans, but avid sports fans don’t need Netflix at all really, not yet,” Benes said.

Additionally, Netflix is adding new content to its platform by partnering with YouTube creators, adding video podcasts such as “The Breakfast Club” and partnering with media companies like BuzzFeed Studio to bring videos as short as three minutes to its service, which could help with viewer engagement.

“They help existing subscribers use the service more,” Benes said. “Let’s say I get in the habit of watching all these video podcasts on Netflix. It might not be the reason why I pay for it, but I might say, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I want to cancel it.’”

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Some analysts think Netflix should consider other acquisitions to fuel future growth after walking away from Warner Bros. Discovery, which was scooped up by Paramount.

Comcast earlier this year announced that it plans to spin off NBCUniversal, which has properties including “Minions” and “Jurassic Park.” Some analysts speculated that Netflix could be interested in buying it.

“From our point of view, it makes a ton of sense,” Reif Ehrlich said. “Universal also has a great film and TV library. Maybe not as deep as Warner Bros., but very strong.”

Netflix executives also are considering launching live channels, including ones that are based on genres, and bundling with other streaming services, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the internal discussions.

Netflix launched TF1 live channels this year on its service in France in a partnership with media company TF1 Group. TF1 said its audience targets that were set for the 18-month horizon were achieved in less than three weeks.

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When it comes to Netflix’s next move, anything is possible.

“Years ago, they said they wouldn’t get into advertising. They wouldn’t get into sports. They wouldn’t have theatrical releases,” Reif Ehrlich said, naming efforts that Netflix initially was adverse to doing before changing course . “So the business will continue to evolve and change.”

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Environmental groups press to halt Imperial Valley lithium venture

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Environmental groups press to halt Imperial Valley lithium venture

In a case that has become a local flashpoint, environmental groups seeking to halt a lithium operation in Imperial County until it gets further review argued before a state appeals court in San Diego on Thursday.

Controlled Thermal Resources wants to extract lithium from hot brine that will be used to power a geothermal electricity plant it plans to build. This type of lithium removal is different from traditional hardrock mining or evaporation ponds. The project also would need 6,500 acre-feet of fresh water annually for washing the mineral and cooling.

Earthworks, a nonprofit focused on the impacts of mining, and Comité Cívico del Valle, an Imperial County environmental justice group, allege the county didn’t adequately examine the project’s effects on water supply, air quality and tribal cultural resources when it granted approvals.

The groups filed suit in March 2024 and Imperial County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Jones ruled against them in January 2025, saying the county met its legal requirements.

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Before a panel of three judges for the California Court of Appeals 4th Appellate District, plaintiffs’ lawyer Doug Carstens argued that if water becomes scarcer, the project may rely on agricultural runoff that currently feeds the shrinking Salton Sea, exacerbating dust and air quality issues. He also said the environmental review did not account for future water-thirsty projects in the desert area.

“There will be a lot of straws dipping into the pool,” Carstens said.

The project, called Hell’s Kitchen, also failed to adequately involve local tribes in assessing the effect on cultural resources, he said.

Controlled Thermal Resources attorney Suzanne Varco said that the company reached out to 26 area tribes in 2021 and received no reply. She noted that one elder from Kwaaymii Laguna Band of Indians responded with concerns about mud pots and other resources in the area, but it was more than five months after the consultation period closed.

Justice Julia Kelety’s questions suggested the tribes provided names for resources in the area but failed to say how they would be affected.

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Justice Truc Do said it was hard to assess fully how the project will affect the region’s water because the environmental review was unclear whether it will last 30 or 50 years. The region primarily relies on water from the overtapped and shrinking Colorado River.

The case is important because Imperial County has pegged its future to lithium, a mineral critical for electric car batteries. Two other companies are trying to reach commercial extraction near the Salton Sea. Gov. Gavin Newsom called Imperial Valley “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” in 2022, and has touted the industry’s potential to bring jobs and community benefits to one of the poorest counties in the state.

Multiple setbacks and deadline extensions later, lithium has yet to materialize even as industry job training programs graduate students into careers that have not arrived in the area. The county has blamed the lawsuit for the slow start. The boom and bust nature of mining as well as shifting federal policies have also played a role.

The court could decide within a few weeks to several months.

Earthworks and Comité Cívico del Valle have repeatedly said they don’t outright oppose lithium development in the area, but want CTR to acknowledge and minimize potential harm.

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“We are not trying to stop the Hell’s Kitchen Project, we think it should be fixed, with enforceable protections for the environment, tribal cultural resources, and the health of frontline communities,” said Jared Naimark, senior manager at Earthworks.

Imperial County and CTR declined to comment on pending litigation, but Controlled Thermal Resources spokesperson Lauren Rose articulated a commitment to advancing geothermal and lithium development “as core components of our Hell’s Kitchen Project.” The company recently announced a plan to power local data centers which led some to worry about the company’s commitment to lithium.

Earlier this year the company delayed its plans for lithium production to 2028. Rose said the project is still progressing toward initial construction and will announce timing “as key development, financing, and construction milestones are achieved.”

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