Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Just Hit a Record High as Nvidia Sank. A 67-Year-Old Who Bought 1,000 Shares in 2016 Can Sell $106,000 of It This Year and Pay 0% on the Gain

Warren Buffett’s company just handed a 67-year-old retiree who has held it for ten years a record price and a tax decision to make before Dec. 31. Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) rose on all five trading days and closed Friday at a record $592.94, up 3.9% for the week and 18% so far in 2026. It did that in the week Nvidia lost its chief executive and fell 12.7% to a 52-week low. Apple and Coca-Cola, the two biggest stocks Berkshire owns, closed at records on Friday too.

In May, Buffett told CNBC that he thinks of the market as "a church with a casino attached," and that "we’ve never had people in a more gambling mood than now." A week in which Berkshire, Coca-Cola and Apple set records while Nvidia sank reads as a signal that money is leaving the casino for the church. The limit is just as plain: one week settles nothing, and Berkshire also rose on its own news, a record $9.6 billion buyback and a quarter in which its railroad, energy and manufacturing businesses all grew.

Consider a 67-year-old retired engineer who bought 1,000 Class B shares on Nov. 14, 2016, ten years ago this week, at $157.93. The shares cost him $157,930. At Friday’s close they are worth $592,940, a gain of $435,010. Berkshire pays no dividend, so the position has never sent him a check. He collects $3,000 a month in Social Security. He and his wife, who is 64, also have $1.4 million in an IRA in index funds, which makes Berkshire about 30% of their investments. After a record week, his question is whether to sell some. The answer turns on a tax rule more than on the price.

What Berkshire just did

Greg Abel has run Berkshire since January, with Buffett, now 96, as chairman emeritus. The company’s third-quarter report on Nov. 7 showed operating earnings of $12.7 billion, down 5.8% from a year earlier because insurance profits fell, while the BNSF railroad, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and the manufacturing and retail businesses all earned more. Berkshire bought back about $9.6 billion of its own stock in the quarter, the most it has ever spent in three months, and about $14.4 billion over nine months.

Its stock portfolio carried the week. Berkshire held 227.9 million Apple shares at June 30, worth about $81 billion at Friday’s close, and the 400 million Coca-Cola shares it has owned since 1994 are worth about $40 billion. Coca-Cola is up 42% this year and Apple 31%, against 10.6% for the S&P 500. Berkshire’s own shares have gained 18.5% since their Oct. 1 low of $500.50.

What the week did to the retiree’s shares

The 1,000 shares gained $22,050 in five days. The same $157,930 put into an S&P 500 index fund on Nov. 14, 2016, would be worth about $550,061 today on price alone, so Berkshire is ahead by about $42,879 before the index fund’s dividends, which would narrow that lead.

The number that matters more is the one he has never touched: the $435,010 gain. Every share he sells carries $435.01 of it, and in a taxable brokerage account that gain is income the year he sells. Berkshire’s record high makes each share worth more and makes each sale’s gain bigger.

The rule that decides how much to sell

For 2026, a married couple filing jointly pays a 0% federal rate on long-term capital gains as long as their taxable income, with the gains included, stays at or below $98,900. Above that line the rate is 15%. The couple’s income this year is his $36,000 of Social Security and $30,000 of IRA withdrawals. Their deductions come to $39,850: the $32,200 standard deduction, $1,650 because he is over 65, and the new $6,000 senior deduction, which he qualifies for because their income is under $150,000.

Here is how far the 0% bracket stretches:

• Taxable Social Security after a sale: $30,600, the 85% maximum
• Ordinary taxable income: $30,000 plus $30,600 minus $39,850, or $20,750
• Room left under the $98,900 line: $78,150 of gains
• Shares that fit: 179, with $77,867 of gain
• Proceeds: $106,136
• Federal tax on the gain: $0

He can sell 179 shares, about $106,000 worth, and pay no federal tax on $77,867 of profit. If you hold Berkshire in a taxable account, the same $98,900 line applies to you, and your room under it is whatever your other income leaves. If he sold 300 shares instead, $52,353 of the gain would land above the line and cost $7,853 at 15%, and the year’s federal bill would be $9,928, or 5.6% of the proceeds. Stopping at 179 keeps it at 2%.

The $2,075 that is easy to miss

The sale is not free, because of Social Security. With no sale, the couple’s provisional income is low enough that only $9,400 of his $36,000 benefit is taxable, and after deductions their taxable income is zero. They owe nothing.

The $77,867 gain counts in the Social Security worksheet. It pushes the taxable share of his benefit to $30,600, the 85% ceiling. That adds $21,200 of ordinary income, which after deductions leaves $20,750 taxed at 10%: $2,075. So the real cost of a $106,136 sale is $2,075, every dollar of it from Social Security turning taxable, and none of it from the gain. On a sale this size that is 2% of the proceeds, far below the 15% the same gain would cost a couple already over the line.

Two things could change the figures, and they are the ones to check in your own year. If his wife claims her own Social Security next year, the worksheet starts higher and the 0% room shrinks. And if the couple takes more than $30,000 from the IRA, each extra dollar of withdrawal is a dollar less of 0% gain.

What Buffett has said about selling

Buffett addressed this exact problem in his 2012 letter to shareholders, when he explained why Berkshire pays no dividend. He compared an owner who collects a dividend with one who sells a small slice of shares each year, about 3.2% in his example, and showed that the seller ends up with more cash and more stock, and a smaller tax bill, because only the gain is taxed. He called it the sell-off approach. For this retiree, 3.2% is 32 shares, about $18,974 a year. Buffett himself has given away Berkshire shares every year since 2006 rather than sell them.

Nothing in Buffett’s record says to sell a business because its stock set a record. What he has said is that the price matters on the day you sell, and this retiree has to sell a few shares a year to live. Selling into a record at a 0% tax rate is the cheapest version of that.

Where this plan is weak

The 179-share sale leaves 821 shares worth $486,804, still 24% of the couple’s money. At the same pace it takes nearly three years to cut the stake in half, and Berkshire’s price will not sit still for three years. Insurance profits fell 43% in the third quarter and can fall further, and lower interest rates cut the income on Berkshire’s roughly $350 billion of cash and Treasury bills. The index-fund comparison uses price only. State income tax, where it exists, is extra. And a 0% sale is only 0% if nothing else lands in the year: a Roth conversion, a big IRA withdrawal or his wife’s benefits would push the gain into the 15% bracket.

The bottom line

Markets were closed Saturday, so every price here is Friday’s close. Berkshire Hathaway closed at a record $592.94 on Friday, in the week Nvidia lost its chief executive and 12.7% of its value. A 67-year-old who bought 1,000 Class B shares ten years ago at $157.93 holds $592,940 and a $435,010 gain. In 2026 he can sell 179 shares, about $106,000, and pay a 0% federal rate on the gain; the only cost is $2,075 of tax on Social Security that would otherwise stay untaxed. Selling 300 shares would cost $9,928. The record high is the reason the sale is worth more this year. The 0% bracket is the reason to do it this year.

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