Bonus: Warren Buffett in Omaha 7/15/26

Summary

Squawk Pod: Bonus – Warren Buffett in Omaha (July 15, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this special bonus episode of Squawk Pod, Becky Quick sits down for an in-depth conversation with Warren Buffett in Omaha. The discussion explores Buffett's revised philanthropic strategy, shifting away from the Gates Foundation to empower his children’s foundations and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. They delve into Buffett’s evolving perspectives on wealth, legacy, trust, and investment choices at age 95. The conversation also touches on Berkshire Hathaway’s major holdings—especially the new stake in Alphabet (Google), his enduring faith in Apple, and his thoughts on contemporary market dynamics and leadership succession at Berkshire.

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Major Discussion Themes & Key Insights

1. Buffett’s Philanthropy: A Major Shift

Timestamps: 01:29–18:19

• No Further Gifts to Gates Foundation

  • Buffett clarifies he will no longer be donating to the Gates Foundation, despite his past lifetime pledge. Going forward, increased donations will benefit the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and each of his three children’s foundations.
  • "I've read a great deal since January 1st in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein... While it's distasteful, while he made mistakes, I made mistakes in hiring all kinds of people... but I found nothing in there that was beyond what I could picture myself doing. And you know, he ended it." (Warren Buffett, 02:11)
  • He stresses this is not out of altered trust for Bill Gates but rather a reevaluation based on his children’s readiness to manage philanthropy.

• Why the Change?

  • Buffett openly reflects on his original motivations for choosing the Gates Foundation and contrasts them with his confidence today in his children’s stewardship.
  • "Twenty years ago in 2006... you trusted the Gates foundation more than your children and now you trust your children more than the Gates Foundation?"
    "No. The moms were different... I was certainly not going to turn something over to my kids and then pull it back from them." (Becky Quick & Warren Buffett, 09:59–10:09)
  • He believes his children have matured and proven themselves through decades of involvement.
  • Buffett stresses the importance of having philanthropic leaders with life experience: "I can't think of a person in the world that 30 or under, for example, I would trust to do it." (11:54)

• Charitable Philosophy

  • Buffett expands on the principles that drive his giving: increasing equality of opportunity and goodwill.
  • He recognizes the impossibility of solving every societal problem: "You're never going to solve everybody's problems... The idea of solving a societal problem, which is what I started out as... it's nice to bet on long shots, but betting on things..." (13:22)
  • Elevates the value of his children’s ability to act on their own insights and empathy:
    "My son Howard just published a 100 page or so report explaining what he's doing... it's better than I could write." (09:38)

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2. Gates Relationship & Communications

Timestamps: 17:59–21:19

• Buffett and Bill Gates have spoken since the latest developments; the decision not to further fund the Gates Foundation was communicated in person.
  • "He came by Omaha, I don't know, three weeks ago... we spent three hours talking together. [The news is] not a surprise to him." (18:19)
  • Emphasizes their enduring friendship and mutual respect, regardless of Buffett’s philanthropic redirection.

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3. Berkshire’s Philanthropic Timeline & Succession

Timestamps: 22:40–26:41, 61:24–62:31

• Faster Share Disbursement

  • Buffet accelerates his giving: Berkshire Hathaway shares are now planned to be distributed for charitable purposes within 8 years after his death (previously 10).
  • Motivated by trust in CEO Greg Abel and a streamlined succession plan.
    • "I have a very high standard in terms of what I'm looking for... we found [it] with Greg Abel." (23:10–24:14)
  • Family voting control will diminish sooner, reflecting confidence in company leadership and aged heirs.

• Sharing Wealth Wisely

  • Emphasizes his wish that descendants and charitable recipients are “given enough to do something, but not enough to do nothing.” (21:21)
  • "At my age, the probabilities really get against me... so the last one I wrote is very likely to be my final will." (22:40)

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4. Philanthropy Breakdowns & Foundation Details

Timestamps: 28:57–32:29

• Annual Giving Updates

  • Each of his children’s foundations receives about 50% more funding than last year. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation receives a tenfold increase, now equivalent to Gates Foundation’s prior payout.
  • "The STB foundation is what I would say totally my first wife would have created and I would have approved it. I mean, we were on the same page on all kinds of questions..." (30:00)

• Operational Philosophy

  • Praises his children’s lean foundation structures—low expenses, high direct impact.
  • "They have expense ratios far below that of institutions... and expense ratios closer to 1%. They've shown that they're not regarding it as play money." (16:47)

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5. Reflections on Luck, Fairness, and Social Philosophy

Timestamps: 32:43–36:32

• Buffett ascribes his fortune to luck, recognizing accidents of birth and a supportive environment.

  • "I, out of 8 billion people, I may be one of the 10 luckiest in the world..." (32:58)

• Fiercely anti-dynastic:

  • "The whole idea of kings and queens... where you pass along for thousands of years the ability to live in any manner you wish... That is not the way the system would be if I had my way." (34:21)
  • Wife Astrid and children share his values; Astrid’s background as a Latvian immigrant shaped her perspective on hardship and empathy.

• On the Giving Pledge

  • Stresses its openness:
  • "The point was to encourage people to give to anything, but not to try and tell them what to do with money." (36:20)

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6. Investment Strategy Updates: Alphabet, Apple & More

Timestamps: 37:01–54:57

A. Alphabet (Google) Investment

• New Stake Origins

  • Becky Quick probes the motivation behind Berkshire’s rapidly grown Alphabet position.
  • "I initiate it... I am not doing anything that [Greg Abel] doesn’t approve of. He's not doing anything I don't approve of. We talk all the time. He's, you know, he's. Well, every day, but he is the decider." (37:32)
  • Alphabet now ranks as one of Berkshire’s largest holdings, but Buffett notes he still prefers several others.
    • "I would say that I don't like it as well as at least four or five other businesses that we own." (44:42)

• Why Google/Alphabet Now?

  • Buffett describes the company as a high-return business facing aggressive CapEx in the AI era.
  • "They're now playing a game in many cases where they're playing a game they don't want to play... but they have to. The important thing is to buy a good business and to buy it on the right terms and to get the right person to run it." (45:31)
  • He’s moved beyond avoidance of “technology” stocks:
    "I've done it... Actually one of the most successful companies I was associated with... was Data Documents [1958]." (47:31)

B. Apple Confidence

• Unwavering confidence in Apple and Tim Cook’s leadership:
  • "If you got somebody, you know, Stradivarius playing the violin for you, I mean, don't spend ... looking for another one. I mean, you've got one already." (50:23)
  • Acknowledges business is always under competitive attack, referencing Ford and General Motors as historical analogs (52:20–53:33).

C. On Other Holdings

• Coca-Cola
  • Refuses to speculate on ongoing IRS legal disputes, asserting the company’s financial strength:
    "Paying the extra money won't break Coca Cola any more than anything I can think of would break Berkshire." (56:25)
• General Investing Wisdom
  • Emphasizes patient, rational investing emphasizing high returns on capital, long-term prospects—not fads or market gambling.
    • "Investing is coming up with... the most successful long term investor was Rockefeller. But look what oil and gas has done over 150, a couple of hundred years..." (43:19)
  • Critiques the “gamification” of markets and the state’s reliance on practices like lotteries (60:23–61:24).

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7. Fed & Market Commentary

Timestamps: 56:44–59:22

• Discusses new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh:

  • Respects the complexity and challenge of the job:
    "That job is so complicated. I think the other day he was quoted as saying that they have 950 economists when they could use about 10." (57:09)
  • Admires Warsh’s public-mindedness and expects he’ll adhere to the dual mandate.

• Market Outlook

  • Doesn’t predict markets but observes a prevalence of speculative (not investment) behavior.
  • "There's more money in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors." (59:22)

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8. Buffett on Legacy and Final Reflections

Timestamps: 61:24–64:02

• Succession at Berkshire

  • Unreserved confidence in Greg Abel as the company’s future leader.
  • "I feel 100% that way. I’ve seen him in a lot of situations." (62:28)

• Personal Health & Perspective

  • Open about recent injury:
    "I broke a leg... I haven't broken a leg in my life until now. But... I really won the lottery when I came out..." (63:04)
  • Reiterates commitment to family values:
    "I haven't raised the kids that way or more importantly, didn't raise them that way." (64:02)

• Final Note

  • "Thank you. And we're interested in business." (64:05)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "No one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people." — Warren Buffett (02:11)
• "You should have enough to do something, but not enough to do nothing." — Buffett on family inheritance (21:19)
• "I've done many dumb things in life. All I have to do is look at our portfolio." — Buffett on mistakes and humility (19:51)
• "I, out of 8 billion people, I may be one of the 10 luckiest in the world." — Buffett on luck (32:58)
• "I've done it [invested in tech stocks]... To me, it looks like you're 95, turning 96 next month and you are still, still changing and following the game." — Becky Quick (48:22)
• "There's more money in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors." — Buffett on market behavior (59:22)

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Segment Timestamps

| Section / Topic | Start – End (MM:SS) | |------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |------------------------| | Philanthropic Decisions, Gates, Family Foundations | 01:29 – 18:19 | | Relationship and Conversation with Bill Gates | 17:59 – 21:19 | | Succession, Share Distribution & Will | 22:40 – 26:41 | | Annual Giving and Foundation Operations | 28:57 – 32:29 | | Luck, Social Philosophy, Giving Pledge | 32:43 – 36:32 | | Berkshire’s Big Investments: Alphabet, Apple, Others | 37:01 – 54:57 | | Fed Policy, Market Commentary | 56:44 – 59:22 | | Legacy, Greg Abel Confidence, Final Reflections | 61:24 – 64:02 |

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Tone & Takeaways

Buffett is as candid, self-reflective, and idiosyncratic as ever, blending folksy wisdom with frank assessments of his legacy, fortune, and the challenging realities of business and philanthropy. There's a sense of urgency—born of age, market change, and social context—informing his redistribution plans. Yet, this episode also demonstrates continued flexibility and curiosity, whether discussing AI, Alphabet, or the state of markets. The takeaway is a living legend intent on giving wisely, empowering successors, and reflecting on his place in history with humility and humor.

Transcript

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[Becky Quick]

Hi Squawkpot listeners. This is a special bonus podcast of my July 2026 conversation with Warren Buffett. We talk about his annual charitable donations, Berkshire Hathaway's investments, and his thoughts on the markets. That's all coming up. Warren first of all, thank you for sitting down and talking with us today. I appreciate it.

[Warren Buffett]

It's always good to sit down.

[Becky Quick]

Yes, I find the same thing. The last time we sat down and spoke with you, or I guess it was two times ago in March when we sat down with you to talk about what you were doing with your charitable giving. You said that you were going to be watching and waiting, that you were kind of waiting to see what came out about Bill Gates and the Epstein files and what had happened. You said you hadn't determined what you were going to do today. You put out a release saying that you will be increasing the amount of money that you give to the Susan Thomas Buffett foundation, your three children's foundations, but there will be nothing given right now to the Gates Foundation. Is that correct?

[Warren Buffett]

Decision that's correct. But in interpreting that, I would point out that I've read a great deal since January 1st in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein, and I've read his remarks to Congress, Gibbon under oath, and I've read cross examination. And while it's distasteful, while he made mistakes, I made mistakes in hiring all kinds of people or choosing friends and then finding out later that they that one way or another they weren't what I thought they were. And so I found nothing in there that was beyond what I could picture myself doing. And you know, he ended it. And I've had situations where I made mistakes about people or People felt they made mistakes about me, but they, you know, life goes on. And no one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people.

[Becky Quick]

You're talking about hiring decisions, maybe who you're associating yourself with. And there were certainly some questionable decisions on that that came up in the release of these files. But there was also other, you know, personal information.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, no, he. Which he admitted to.

[Becky Quick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Warren Buffett]

No. And there again, I would say that, you know, I would. I've known some pretty wonderful people, and I still know some wonderful people. I don't think they've made every decision.

[Becky Quick]

So why, if that's your opinion on it, why are you no longer giving money to the Gates Foundation?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, I reevaluated my whole situation, just like I have been doing since I was in my 20s. And we'd gotten married, Susie and I, and we didn't really have any money, but we did know that we intended to live fine and we intended to have a family and. But we did not have aspirations of, you know, having six houses or a 500 foot yacht or anything of the sort.

[Becky Quick]

So.

[Warren Buffett]

So even then we talked about what we would do philanthropically. But my idea and conviction was that I would compound money at a better rate than society generally and that Susie would give it away better than 99.9% of the people that were giving it away. And she would get involved personally with the gifts, whereas I like to do things wholesale and she likes to do things retail. So we. We had a plan, but we didn't have any money. Over time, the money started to pile up. She would say, are we rich yet? And I would say, no, but we're getting closer. But I was not in a hurry to do anything. We did some small things as we went along. I did it. I felt the most important threat to mankind was the nuclear bomb. So I had sort of grandiose plans in my mind about how I could change the probabilities of that happening. And I finally came to the conclusion, after decades, that I could not have a 1000th of 1% chance of succeeding in that. And it's nice to bet on long shots, but betting on things that are.

[Becky Quick]

So you've changed your plans.

[Warren Buffett]

So I changed plans.

[Becky Quick]

Why did you change your plans?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, we changed plans because of what I've said out here. The money began to pile up.

[Becky Quick]

No, but you changed your plan. Now, in 2024, you said it was a lifetime pledge to the Gates foundation. Now in 2026, you were saying that's not the case. What happened?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, what happened was that I gave the Gates Foundation a great deal of

[Becky Quick]

money, maybe $47 billion in total.

[Warren Buffett]

And I thought that was a good decision. I think it was a decent decision. But I did not think my kids were in any way ready to give away vast sums of money. We had started, Susie and I started with them. I think we gave them. We may have given them $100,000 each.

[Becky Quick]

This goes back 30 years at this point or longer.

[Warren Buffett]

That's about right. Yeah, but they were growing children. They had children of their own by that time, but still, I don't think they were ready for it. And I certainly wanted to treat them all equally. So that's always a problem if they have unequal talents at something. Now, I can't turn them all into musicians and I can't turn them all into baseball players or anything, but I really hoped in the charitable field that they would have common goals and be able to work out among themselves a way where with vast amounts of money, that everybody felt there was plenty to do what they wanted to do.

[Becky Quick]

And you think that's the case today?

[Warren Buffett]

Pardon me?

[Becky Quick]

You think that's the case today?

[Warren Buffett]

I feel the probabilities of that are extraordinarily high. Now, could something happen to this plan? Of course. I mean, I've got three children that are 72 and 71, and look at my age. I mean, things can happen in this world that cause you to change, but I have no expectation of changing. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, we've reached the ideal point we kept. Well, Susie died in 2004, so it's been more me kicking up the amount they received annually. And clearly they feel happy with the job, too. I mean, there's no sense sticking people in a job that they aren't fit for. Or they differ totally from you and your views. I mean, I had different views in life than my dad, who I admired more than anybody in the world. But it still didn't mean that I joined his church or did anything identically. And he encouraged that view. He would quote to me, Emerson, where Emerson said something, in fact, that the force in you is new in nature, saying you're one of a kind. Find out what that one is. And I think I found it very young by luck, circumstance, and pretty purposeful pursuit myself. My kids did not. They behave like most kids say. They flirted with a lot of different ideas. But I feel 100% now about what I have seen them do. My son Howard just published a 100 page or so report and explaining what he's doing why, he's doing what?

[Becky Quick]

An annual report for the Howard Buffett

[Warren Buffett]

foundation, and it's better than I could write. He has a sense of stewardship

[Becky Quick]

and

[Warren Buffett]

he also has enormous empathy for people he sees that don't have it as lucky as he is.

[Becky Quick]

So then, is it fair to say 20 years ago in 2006, when you made this decision, you trusted the Gates foundation more than your children and now you trust your children more than the Gates Foundation?

[Warren Buffett]

No. The moms were different. Isn't to say that I trusted them differently, but I felt they were capable of handling. And I was certainly not going to turn something over to my kids and then pull it back from them. I mean, and the Gates foundation has turned out to earn far more money than they expected to do. They spent more money than anybody in the world I can think of.

[Becky Quick]

Yeah, they have an endowment of north of $90 billion.

[Warren Buffett]

I think at this point it's around that figure. And Bill has very substantial resources outside which he intends to give. And I believe 100%, I believe that they will go there. And I, you know, I've really done the same thing as Bill in a certain sense, except I'm, when I put it in, I tell the three children that it is theirs and it's their responsibility to get it done.

[Fidelity Representative]

Well,

[Warren Buffett]

and you may find this hard to believe, but it's true. I've never looked at their Form 900, which they file. I, I, I'm not judging each action as it takes place because you take actions where you think there's only a 10% or 20% probability of success. It's not like investments.

[Becky Quick]

But what are your goals for the money? And you kind of intimated that the kids have similar goals as to what you have.

[Warren Buffett]

There's, there are all kinds of ways in which the world is as unequal as you can possibly imagine. I mean, just imagine in health or the lack of birth or all of those sort of things. And the ultimate goal is to make life better for the people who get short straws. And there's a lot more people who get short straws than we'll ever be able to take care of. And my kids will have more insight into certain areas than I would, and I have more insight than they do just because of different interests and exposure. But the one thing I'm convinced of is that they will be attempting to do something and they'll be better at it. And the probability is that they've got more years to live than I do. So I mean, it really sneaks up on you when you get to be in the 70s or something like that. But I can't think of a person in the world that 30 or under, for example, I would trust to do it. I think there's all kinds of brilliant people that are 30 or under and they may turn out to be leaders of society and terribly important writers or whatever it may be. But I do think there's something to see how people behave under different circumstances.

[Becky Quick]

The kids are going to come under pressure and probably already have from a long list of parents, people who think that they should fund their ideas. I saw something today on X that Brad Gerstner put out, suggesting that you give the money to Trump accounts, that there are other great things to do. What do you say to the lots and lots of people who will say this is where you should put that money? Or what do you think they should say?

[Warren Buffett]

If you take 8 billion people in the world and feel that everybody should have an equal chance, I mean, you could spend. $1,000 or $10,000 to solve everybody's problem. You're never going to solve everybody's problems. The idea of solving a societal problem, which is what I started out as with a nuclear weapon, I mean, everybody who worked on a nuclear weapon regretted the fact that they had to put together something like that. The most brilliant people in the world, but they never figured out how to put the olive back in the bottle. And you know, that is not something the society in the first couple hundred million years of existence there. A couple million.

[Becky Quick]

Do any of those plans, though, like the Trump accounts, appeal to you? Do you think they appeal to the kids? Or do you just leave it to the kids and say you can I

[Warren Buffett]

leave it to the kids? But I do have this provision in my will, not in these gifts that I'm giving now, but in the bulk of my fortune is likely to be left upon my death, even though I'm stepping up the.

[Becky Quick]

Yeah, I will say right now it's $140 billion that you have left based on yesterday's closing stock price. In terms of the Class A shares you have left. If the money you gave out this year is $6 billion, yeah, it'll have

[Warren Buffett]

to go up, right.

[Becky Quick]

It's 17.5 billion dol least annually. And that's assuming that Berkshire doesn't go up from here. If you want this to be given

[Warren Buffett]

out in 18, incidentally, I mean, that is not a realistic assumption to give

[Becky Quick]

$17.5 billion away annually.

[Warren Buffett]

No. An investment produces nothing.

[Becky Quick]

Oh, correct.

[Warren Buffett]

So I get my 5% treasury bills.

[Becky Quick]

Right. How much did you have when you started making these donations in 2006? We were talking about less than $100 billion at that point. Right. So you've given away $67 billion and now you have $140 billion left against as of today. Right.

[Warren Buffett]

That's one thing I understand. I mean, I understand all these other

[Becky Quick]

things, but $17.5 billion, even if it weren't to go up, is more money than anybody is giving away right now. The Gates foundation gave away what, $8 billion last year?

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, that's about. Right.

[Fidelity Representative]

That's a lot.

[Warren Buffett]

They did it employing a few thousand people, which almost any foundation would, that had that kind of money. And I'm impressed by the fact that my kids really want to give the money away rather than do other things with it as they go along.

[Becky Quick]

You mean, rather than spend it on

[Warren Buffett]

themselves or anything of the sort. Of now when they're. They'll need more help as they go along. But I think the foundations employ something between. There's three of them now, four of

[Becky Quick]

them with the STB Foundation.

[Warren Buffett]

Well, with stb. Well, let's take the kids first, because there they make the total decision as to what they're doing. And they have between 11 and 25 employees total between the three foundations each.

[Becky Quick]

Okay.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah. And they have expense ratios far below that of institutions that are much better known and expense ratios closer to 1%. They've shown that they're not regarding it as play money.

[Becky Quick]

Right, right. Meaning that they bulk. Almost everything they get goes back out the door.

[Warren Buffett]

Well, it really all goes out the door eventually, but. Yeah, yeah. They're not going to build huge home office buildings or hold conferences at esoteric places and all kinds of things. There's nothing wrong with doing that. But the important thing is whether people that have 100 times what they need don't pass it along to somebody else for the next generation in many parts of the world have been doing that for thousands of years.

[Becky Quick]

Yeah. You're not a big fan of bureaucracy. Berkshire Hathaway was run here in this office with 25 people or something.

[Warren Buffett]

And we probably went up. We probably grew in size 10 for one before we added the last two or three

[Becky Quick]

before we move on. Does Bill Gates know about this? When we spoke with you in March, you said you had not spoken with him since any of these allegations started coming out. He said the same thing last month in June when he sat down with this congressional testimony, that he had not spoken with you since January. Have you Spoken with him since. And does this come as a surprise to him?

[Warren Buffett]

No. No, it does not come as a surprise. And me, he came by Omaha, I don't know, three weeks ago or. I kind of lose track on time. But certainly not three months, but three since we talked and we spent three hours talking together. And he intends to call me. He's the one that initiates calls, just generally. And as you can see, I'm available anytime. But he's much more organized than I am and. But he already proposed another one, another meeting. Yeah, and he is. We have had enormous number of good times together since we Met, whatever it was, 1991. And he's always done more than a sheriff. Always more than a sheriff. You don't see me doing the planning or doing.

[Becky Quick]

And the friendship, you mean?

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, it's been a wonderful friendship. And Bill and I are interested in enough things that overlap that we find plenty to talk about, and then each of us has got his own specialty to some extent.

[Becky Quick]

But you told him three weeks ago or so when you met him that you would not be making any more donations to the Gates Foundation.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, I may have even. May have even been. I can't tell you exactly what I told him, but at some point, I had read the. I had read what Congress came up with. I'd read everything. And all I can say is I don't know whether I've done dumber things, but I've done things. I've just done many dumb things in life. I mean, that is all I have to do is look at our portfolio. I mean, four out of five of our. At least four out of five of the decisions I've made have not been anything out of the ordinary.

[Becky Quick]

But he was okay when you told him this was okay. So he's on board. None of this is news to him.

[Warren Buffett]

Bill, unlike me, more or less, I think, wants it to end when he dies. Then, of course, he doesn't know about that. His foundation, the Gates Foundation. Whereas I hope that my kids live a lot longer than I do, and I hope all three participate, and I think all three will be better off for doing it. But that's not a decision that was made. Well, when Susie and I started giving them. I think we moved it up to maybe 30 million a year.

[Becky Quick]

To the kids foundations?

[Warren Buffett]

No, actually to.

[Becky Quick]

Oh.

[Warren Buffett]

But to their foundations. I don't remember the exact figures of the whole, but we gave it to them when we were 99% sure that they would. Well, we do. They were willing and in some cases, in a Certain way, eager to do things for other people. They've had a good life. They haven't. Well, they've followed that rule that somebody told me a long time ago, which I give credit for, but I didn't think about myself, which is that if you're the child of some very rich family, that you should have enough, you should be given enough to do. To do something, but not enough to do nothing. And that's exactly what's been going on at an increased scale. But I have to step it up now because at my age, the probabilities really get against me. So that the last one I wrote is very likely to be my final will, whereas the wills that I was writing When I was 30 or 40 or 50, I knew they would change him.

[Becky Quick]

Right, let's talk about that. The other thing that you're announcing in this is that you would like to see the money go out at an expedited and the shares go out at an expedited rate. To this point, it'd kind of been 10 years after your death. You thought the shares would all be dispersed to charity. Now you're saying that you would like all of those shares to be dispersed eight years from now by the end of 2034. What changed your mind on that, and what does that mean?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, it certainly means that I had two purposes in all of philanthropy, and particularly with essentially 100% of my money in Berkshire. You know, that's my painting. And I like the painting. I like the people associated with it. And it's been refined over time. You know, I've added an apple over here or something, and I don't think. I don't know of 10 people in the United States that I would trust to hand it over to your company. You're talking your company, the company. I don't know of five people, and I know a lot of people.

[Fidelity Representative]

Now.

[Warren Buffett]

I have a very high standard in terms of what I'm looking for in that person. And clearly we fought him with Greg Abel, and that becomes more evident by the day. Even this year. There's been added things that.

[Becky Quick]

So you don't think you need to hold on to the shares or have your family have voting power over those shares for as long, because you think Greg Abel is.

[Warren Buffett]

He is the choice. The only question is he's not immortal either. You know, I mean, you always have this mortality question, you know, and nobody gets away from it. I mean, people can be in marvelous health or seem like it, you know, who died the other day? Lindsey Graham, 71 or something. So there's an enormous variety variation from. From being lucky to not being lucky. And. That's the bet I make with Greg. I do not have a list of 10. I mean, it isn't. I don't have 10 kids either, but even I don't have a list of three.

[Becky Quick]

In terms of who you would trust the company to at this point?

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah. Now I've got directors that I trust to be imbued with the. They like the concept of Berkshire Hathaway. They would like to keep it going. So I've got the right group that's the intermediary in making that choice. But things don't always work out perfectly in the world.

[Becky Quick]

So your hope is that the shares will be dispersed by the end of 2034, just over eight years from now, eight and a half years from now. But I take it if you're not here and the kids are the one making the choices, you would leave it to their decision making at that point?

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah. Eight years from now, you know, my daughter will be 80, very close to 81. You know, another one will be 70. And it's not just a question of mortality. It's a question of keeping our marbles, too, you know.

[Becky Quick]

Have they heard you say it like this?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, I mean, I'm losing marbles at this point. I accumulate a marble for longer time than I deserved, and that's just a matter of luck. I mean, I've seen so many managers of our companies that. Well, I think I've mentioned it in a few annual reports, annual meetings. I mean, we had guys cutting out paper dolls, and there's, you know, and their assistance covering for them.

[Becky Quick]

Okay, just to clarify, at this point you are saying this of your right mind while you're making these decisions?

[Warren Buffett]

I hope so.

[Becky Quick]

Maybe you should.

[Warren Buffett]

But actually, I wrote the will a couple years ago, so. And I will not knowingly. I mean, I will not change that will except for extremely important decisions, because there's no question that I had my models when I wrote it.

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[Becky Quick]

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what happens now, because you've talked about how this is really your children making the decisions. But in the announcement that you're putting out now, you increased each of your children's foundations the amount you're giving them by about 50%.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah.

[Becky Quick]

Over what you gave them last year. But it's the Susan Thompson Buffett foundation that really is seeing the outsized gains in what they're going to be giving away. The amount of shares they received this year is tenfold what it was last year. Basically, they're getting all the money that would have gone to the Gates Foundation.

[Warren Buffett]

Well, they're getting all the money that would have gone to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. And then some would have survived.

[Becky Quick]

Right? And then some. But basically the payout they're going to be getting this year in terms of what they can disperse is $4.5 billion. That's how much the Gates foundation got last year. Why so much more to the STB foundation than the other three foundations? Relatively speaking, everybody gets more. But why that outsourced?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, the STB foundation is what I would say totally my first wife would have created and I would have approved it. I mean, we were on the same page and all kinds of questions that aren't even questions anymore. In terms of women's rights, I mean, civil rights I mean, we were in sync. Now she took an interest in listening to everybody's story. That would be the last thing in the world I would want to do. She saw every individual as an individual, but she also saw them as a group. I saw them as a group, and I had other things that fascinated me more.

[Becky Quick]

This money that goes through, is this what you will anticipate seeing from this point on? In years past, at Thanksgiving, you've given additional disbursements to the three Kids Foundations. Do you plan to do that again this year?

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, I'm almost sure I will. But regardless, the other goes on. I mean, if I. I'm more probable to die before Thanksgiving than any of my three children, and probably the probability of all three combined. But I also enjoy explaining why I take actions, just like I do in the annual report on Berkshire. I've got a didactic streak, which my partner, Charlie Munger, had. And to us, the money wasn't. Well, the money was important in terms of what it could actually do for other people. It wasn't important for what it could do for me. I have not denied myself anything in life.

[Becky Quick]

If something happens that you're not here to make these decisions, does it revert to what you talked about last year in your will? Where there is a new foundation that is created, there's a new finding, and the three kids are in charge.

[Warren Buffett]

It does have slight variations, one being unanimous consent among the three for anything they do.

[Becky Quick]

Does the STB foundation or the Kids Foundations, do they have to spend the money in this fiscal year as was required of the Gates foundation, or is this something where they can take their time and make their plans?

[Warren Buffett]

They know my views on it, but they can do what they want. But if they. If their wants get away from the basic principles far enough, you look at it again. But that isn't going to happen.

[Becky Quick]

Warren, you've spent most of your adult life thinking about philanthropy. How have your views changed over time? What would you like to see happen with this? I think about the Giving Pledge and what you all did. What's your perspective at this point?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, the perspective I have is that I, out of 8 billion people, I may be one of the 10 luckiest in the world. So I've been lucky and healthy to get to 95. I've been lucky in that the field that intrigued me and where I had some natural ability, happened to be one that paid off in a way that nothing paid off like it. I've been a great violin player. Anything else, it requires more talent than I have but a different form of talent. And fortunately, I got exposed, partly accidentally, to what I liked to do very early on. And that was just an accident. If my father had been a plumber, I would not have had the same advantage I had. So I was incredibly lucky. And then as life has gone along, I have seen how unbelievably unlucky some people have been. And it is luck. I mean, you know, we, you know, we had accidents with the kids when they were young, and all kinds of things can happen, and they just didn't happen to us.

[Becky Quick]

All right, let's talk about a few other things while we have you here. Is there more you wanted to say?

[Warren Buffett]

Let me add one more thing on that, though. I mean, the idea, the whole idea of kings and queens and everything, where you pass along for thousands of years the ability to live in any manner you wish, you know, while you say let the meat cake to the rest of the. That is not the way the system would be if I had my way of designing a world. And I can't change the design of the world, but I can nibble the edges.

[Becky Quick]

And those are the same values that your wife, Astrid, and your kids all have, too, 100%.

[Warren Buffett]

And I'm glad you mentioned Astrid, because she feels she's as extreme in this view as you can imagine. And she. She's actually experienced more hardship in life than either Susie or I did because she's Latvian and came over in a boat in Ellis island and didn't know who she was being assigned to, lived in foster homes, all kinds of things. So the accidents of birth are just so extreme. And I've seen people that use those accidents to justify positions that are just ridiculous, in my view. And that's the reason for encouraging philanthropy. You can't mandate. Isn't philanthropy if you mandated. But people, most people are a combination, you know, lots of good instincts and lots of not so good instincts, including me. And if you do things that appeal to their better instincts, they respond sometimes.

[Becky Quick]

And by the way, your point with the Giving Pledge, when you founded that with Bill and Melinda Gates, was to encourage people to give to anything, but not to try and tell them what to do with money.

[Warren Buffett]

Exactly. And also decide when they would do it. I mean, a family that's got a family farm they've had for 100 years, and they're, you know, within the family, they've all worked out and everything, they're going to have a different view toward capital. They're all going to work hard, but they're just Going to. They're going to have a hole different view than some guy that is writing options on Wall Street.

[Becky Quick]

Yeah. Okay, let's talk about a few other things that have happened maybe since we got the chance to sit down last in May. The first that I can think of is the massive position that Berkshire has developed and grown in Alphabet and Google shares. That's something that a lot of people have looked at and said, okay, this is Greg's mark on how he's going to be changing the portfolio. How did the Alphabet position come along?

[Warren Buffett]

I initiate it. I mean, I normally wouldn't give you an answer on something like that, but I will because I am not doing anything that he doesn't approve of. He's not doing anything I don't approve of. We talk all the time. He's, you know, he's. Well every day, but he is the decider. And getting back to Alphabet or Google, it's probably number five or six.

[Becky Quick]

Well, I thought it was number three. If you consider the $10 billion private placement that would go along with that because that would put it north of $31 billion.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, but we've got the Burlington Northern Railroad, which is certainly worth far more money than.

[Becky Quick]

Okay, so you're counting fully owned companies as well.

[Warren Buffett]

I mean, we are always making the choice between whether we'll buy Marxable securities or we look at them to say why there are some minor exceptions to that. We can't set dividend policy, for example, if we don't own it. But the chances of those being material. The important thing is to buy a good business and to buy it on the right terms and to get the right person to run it.

[Becky Quick]

Okay, but you've quickly grown a north of $30 billion investment in Alphabet. That puts it in terms of those companies that you own pieces of behind only Apple and American Express. And American Express. So Coca Cola would be smaller, bank of America would be smaller.

[Warren Buffett]

It's kind of close. But if you take Coca Cola, which we've owned 45 years, whatever it may be, We don't have a thing to do with running that business. But it's a very good business. And when I say a very good business, I mean something that you can expect to own, earn high returns on capital over a long period of time. Now the question is, when you get into Google or any of the AI companies, you're putting out huge amounts of money. And I can put huge amounts of money into government bonds and get 20 or 30 or $40 billion a year in terms of payments from them. So a good business is one that earns a lot more than, and has prospects of continuing to earn a lot more than the returns on essentially riskless investments which you could define as Treasuries. But if you take something like American Express, you know, there are most of the banks earn 13, 14% on capital. If I asked everybody to guess what American Express would, they would come up with some figure similar but it's so different that it earns 30% plus on capital and it does not incur more risk in doing so than the banks that earn 13 or 14%. And that the trick in life is to find, I mean investing is to find businesses that are going to earn high returns on capital for an extended period of time. And that's what happened with Berkshire for a long period of time. Long period of time gets to be very important because it doubles later on. Very big numbers. But Charlie Munger, my partner for decades, he just pounded the idea that it wasn't a good business just because it was doing sexy things or whatever it might be. But if it wasn't earning real cash or be expected to do it in a very short period of time and be able to distribute it if it wanted to, better yet, if it could re employ it as a business, it was even better than one that had the ability to earn high returns but you couldn't deploy the excess capital of those returns.

[Becky Quick]

Okay, let me ask you though. Forever people have thought of you as somebody who doesn't invest in technology and by the way, you've described yourself as somebody who doesn't invest in technology. Obviously the biggest position in the Berkshire portfolio is Apple, a position that you put on. But at the time you called that a consumer company. Google you just called an AI company. So what happened?

[Warren Buffett]

Google, the real question with Google and all of its competitors now they're all laying out hundreds of billions.

[Becky Quick]

I think they're big capex spenders. Yeah.

[Warren Buffett]

And that's real money. I mean that's if our railroad were to lay out 300 million or billion or 200 billion, you know, that kind of money wasn't even put in the railroad business, you know, in terms of development. So. And they are, that's the game they're playing now. They weren't playing that game with computer software.

[Financial Advertiser]

No.

[Becky Quick]

So when they were asset light you didn't like them and the markets loved them. Now that they are, I made a mistake spending heavily on Capex. A lot of shareholders don't like them as much because they don't, I think

[Warren Buffett]

they're more likely to be a winner based on the record than probably 90% or 95% of what gets merchandise through Wall street. Because Wall street is interested to whether they can sell something. And I can't recall a report on Wall street that really gets into the internal rates of return that a business is actually earning what's more important than what a business is earning. But they ask all these questions about what will happen next quarter. It's just, it's ridiculous. But you know investing is coming up with well probably the close to the most successful long term investor was Rockefeller. But look at what oil and gas has done over 150, a couple of hundred years. So he kept compounding at a very good rate. Not as good a rate as GEICO would have achieved in his early years because it's easier to do when you're small. Getting to do it when you're large is you got the whole world looking at you trying to figure out how come those guys are doing it, we're not doing it.

[Becky Quick]

Why do you like Alphabet above all others and what made you initiate this position? What was the eureka moment?

[Warren Buffett]

I would say that I don't like it as well as at least four or five other businesses that we own

[Becky Quick]

other than Apple, the railroad, well, American Express.

[Warren Buffett]

You're not going to get the whole report out of me. But.

[Becky Quick]

But you like it enough to make it a huge business.

[Warren Buffett]

I like Berkshire that way. I mean Berkshire earned high returns on capital. I'm not talking about using the tricks of leverage or that sort of thing I'm at all.

[Becky Quick]

But I'm talking about why Alphabet versus the other Magnificent Seven or the other hyperscalers who are doing the same thing, spending a lot of money, Amazon, Microsoft, whoever it may be to try and win in this position of AI.

[Warren Buffett]

Well I don't want to sit around knocking the others. They don't have any choice to spend like this. Yeah, they're now playing a game in many cases where they or some cases where they're playing a game they don't want to play. IBM would have loved it if they just kept playing the game that IBM was playing in the 30s or the 40s or the 50s and the 60s. And then somebody came along with and said we'll get a better result for you achieving the objective of all the customers you have because that's all you're going to have is either have happy customers, you don't have customers over time. And the customer is not dumb. Wall street can be very dumb. And in terms of they can dream, but a guy with a grocery store can't dream. I mean, I worked at my grandfather's grocery store and we saw. Well, we had one store in 1869 and we had one store in 1969. And other people were earning high returns on capital, some on a national scale, A and P, which people don't associate with anymore. In the 1930s, I mean, they were number one enemy number one of trust busters in Washington. And they had a very, very, very good hand. And that hand disappeared.

[Becky Quick]

So it's a different game. And you like this game. You understand this game more than you understood the game they were playing before. Is that.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, there's all kinds of games I don't understand. Sure.

[Becky Quick]

Yeah. But this.

[Warren Buffett]

Why should I expect to make money in all kinds of things I don't understand,

[Becky Quick]

but that's what I'm getting at. What do you understand about this game at this point? Because most people would say he's never going to buy any technology stocks. And I think you've said the same thing yourself in the past.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, but I've done it. And actually one of the most successful companies I was associated with going back to 1958, we started a company called Data Documents. We started Data Documents because a couple pals of mine read in the paper that IBM had settled a antitrust suit by divesting. They had to divest 50% of the capacity of what was their best business. And everybody knew it was their best business. Now, it so happens it ran out after 10 or 15 years. And I. I knew some of the people that caused it to run out. But if you have a wonderful business, you are going to be subject to attack. So it's not a question of whether it was wonderful yesterday. It's the question is how long is it going to be wonderful.

[Becky Quick]

But that's what I think I love. People can try and pigeonhole you and say they know who you are and what you do. To me, it looks like you're 95, turning 96 next month and you are still, still changing and following the game.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, but it's easier for me if somebody came along. Well, I'm just trying to think of what I'd be. Better candy that would have more predictive value to me than if they came along and had a better way of doing something that 100 of their competitors would sneak in the. And the planet died to see how, exactly how they got it all done.

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[Becky Quick]

We're back. This is a special bonus edition of Squawk Pod with Warren Buffett. Let's talk about your largest position, Apple. You told us that you were thrilled with everything that Tim Cook had done. I don't know how well you know John Ternus at this point or what you think of the company's doing. You still have a lot of faith. And Apple, well,

[Warren Buffett]

there was no move they could make that would replace Tim that I would have liked. I mean, you know, if you got somebody, you know, Stradivarius playing the violin for you, I mean, don't spend the next 300 years looking for another one. I mean, you've got one already. And, and of course, Wall street thrives on the idea that convincing you that if you just listen to them, they've got something that nobody else has, which can't be true. I mean, it's ridiculous. But it works because, well, in general it works because America has been a wonderful place to invest money. And the Dow Industrials, when I bought my first stock had just crossed 100, 100, and now it's 52,000 or something. And you've got dividends in between and all kinds. Well, I mean, the village idiot could have made it from that point forward. And so I've been in the right game. If I'd been in wheat speculation, I mean, we'd, it's gone from, you know, I don't know whether it's gone from $3 to $5 or something over 200 years. And. It's a pretty, it's a very simple business as long as you keep remembering that it's simple and that making it complicated can, well, it's just crazy at that point. You're gambling.

[Becky Quick]

But do you still like Apple?

[Warren Buffett]

People's enthusiasm for gambling is enormous.

[Becky Quick]

You've talked about that over the last Many years, probably since COVID But you still like Apple. Back to the point.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know more about Apple than I knew many years ago. But on the other hand, if you're Apple, you've got very, very smart people all over the world shooting and trying to figure out how to make sure that Apple's future, the future is as bright as the past. And look at, look at the car companies. I mean, Henry Ford owned the car business for 20 or 25 years, and he did the brutally integrated, like you cannot believe it. He got, drove costs down. He got the cost of Model T down, I think to $285. And he always was decreasing prices while increasing wages. So he was. But he also was a little nuts in some ways, and that did him in. Finally when he converted over to the Model A and General Motors just came racing by, and my friend Charlie Munger thought that General Motors was the. Was going to be the dominant company who could imagine attacking their dealer fleet and everything they had going for them? And, and you know, you've always got

[Becky Quick]

somebody shooting at you to that point. Apple brought a lawsuit against OpenAI just last Friday night, just last week, and basically accused OpenAI of trying to steal trade secrets.

[Warren Buffett]

I would say most companies would love to try steal trade secrets. They wouldn't love getting caught. But if you really could dig deep into the hearts of managers, they'd like to steal secrets, wouldn't you? I mean, if you had a business and you were struggling along and the guy next door was making money. I had a half interest in a Sinclair filling station at 30th and Reddick in Omaha when I was in my early 20s and, and I been to business school and knew all these things. The guy next door had the Phillips station and he was pumping 30,000 barrels, 30,000 gallons a month, and we were pumping 15,000 galleries a month. So I said, we're going to wipe this guy off the face of the earth. And, you know, a couple of years later, we were selling 15,000 and he was selling 30,000 and we gave up. And we close up and I think he's still operating. People are playing for keeps in business.

[Becky Quick]

Yeah. We talked about Coca Cola briefly, the longtime position you've held for more than 45 years. There is a major lawsuit with the government that could look at action, I believe, going all the way back to 1996 with Coca Cola. The government, the IRS has said that they owe them $20 billion, roughly which

[Warren Buffett]

they paid, I think they put $10 billion or something close to 10 billion.

[Becky Quick]

Right. But we're going to hear about whether the activities and this has to do with overseas, their overseas business. Just some of the accounting that goes back and forth. Coca Cola says that they thought they had an agreement in 1996 that stood with how they should behave. The government's now looking for more money and saying that's not the case. It's not just Coca Cola that's riding on this. There's a lot of other American businesses who. The same thing.

[Warren Buffett]

Oh, a huge number. Which is why the derivative effects of the suit could be the biggest in American history.

[Becky Quick]

What do you think of this? And with the understanding that you are a Coca Cola shareholder, a large Coca Cola shareholder. Was this an overzealous government looking for ways to raise more money? Was this a company that performed badly or that behaved badly?

[Warren Buffett]

I've got a dog in that pipe. So that's why we have courts. Yeah.

[Becky Quick]

So you'll wait and see what happens with it. I take it you're watching this closely.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah. Paying the extra money won't break Coca Cola any more than anything I can think of would break Berkshire. I mean, I look at. All I do is think about the downside. The upside will take care of itself.

[Becky Quick]

We also have a new FOMC chairman, Kevin Warsh, who is taking a look at the economy this week. He's going to beor. He is speaking in front of Congress. A lot of questions about what he'll do with the markets, what he'll do with interest rates and what that in turn means to the markets. You in the past have spoken about how interest rates are gravity and it determines where stock market prices are headed. So what do you think happens? What are you betting?

[Warren Buffett]

I don't know what he'll do, but I would say that that job is so complicated. I think the other day he was quoted as saying that they have 950 economists when they could use about 10. I admire him for taking on the job. I think he will do the best he can at achieving the job he was assigned to do, which is 2% inflation while maintaining maximum employment. My guess is that just like some of the others that have preceded him, not all of them, but he would read that every morning.

[Becky Quick]

The dual mandate of the Fed.

[Warren Buffett]

The dual mandate. And he knows he can't be perfect at it. And just like I know I couldn't be perfect at taking people's money and earning super returns on it, but my guess is that people were right in realizing that I cared about what happened to their money. And I would say that Wash has. He cares about the country. And I think that's been true of a good many. It doesn't mean their decisions are always great, but sometimes the decisions are so tough. I mean, imagine Paul Volcker getting death threats all the time and. And others just think they know more than they do.

[Becky Quick]

But you think Kevin knows a lot and is.

[Warren Buffett]

I think he's a very. Yeah, I think he was a good choice. Which probably means the President will be mad. Future presidents will be mad at him, because future presidents are looking the next election, and he's not supposed to be looking at the next election.

[Becky Quick]

Right. You obviously don't come out and make calls on where the market's headed at any point in time, but you do make calls on market behavior and what makes sense to you and what doesn't. Do you think the markets make sense to you when there's so much riding on AI? Earnings have been very strong. The consumer looks like it's held in to this point. But how do you view it?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, I think there are. There are times when opportunities are just thrown at you so fast you can't, you know, it's unbelievable. And then there's other times when you're very, very lucky if you find one thing in a couple of years, and it should always be that the latter is what prevails. But since humans love to gamble so much, there's more money in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors. If somebody bought Berkshire 40 years, you know, 50 years ago, a guy would have made one commission and he should spend the rest of his time telling the client, don't do anything with it. And that's just not the way we can't expect out of humans. But every now and then you do find people. I mean, you find people behave far better than other people.

[Becky Quick]

Fair to say, though, it's tougher to find values or find value.

[Warren Buffett]

It's tougher to find values when everybody is preferring gambling. And from the standpoint of the state, we may have discussed this, but from the standpoint of the state, it's sort of disgusting because the state needs money for all kinds of things, roads, schools, you name it. And they have found that they can clip people who are buying nothing but hope, selling them a payout, something with a payout ratio of 60% or something like that. And if they weren't doing that, they'd have to have the income tax higher. It's a cynical sort of activity. And I think the less you get cynicism between the governing body and the people of government. You don't want people, people to be cynical about their system, but there's times when the system says, you know, just be as cynical as you want, because this is what I'm going to do, baby.

[Becky Quick]

Let's go back very quickly. You touched on this. Part of the reason that you want the shares given out over the next eight years is because you want your kids making these decisions. But the other part is that you don't feel like you necessarily have to hold on to these voting shares of Berkshire as, for as long. Because you have faith in Greg.

[Warren Buffett]

Yeah, exactly. And if we didn't, if we didn't have faith. Well, part of the reason I'm around is because we didn't have sufficient faith in anybody and we know all kinds of people. But I mean, if you were talking about Tom Murphy, I mean, if I could have hired Tom Murphy. But the trouble is they were all older and all my friends were pretty much older. So I didn't, it wasn't like I was in college and I could see who really had it and who was writing crib sheets on their answers, on their shoulder, on their shirt cost.

[Becky Quick]

But you feel that way with Greg?

[Warren Buffett]

I feel 100% that way. I've seen him in a lot of situations. A lot of situations. I felt that way with Charlie, I felt that way with Tom Murphy. But nobody expects you to pick out 25 husbands and have them all work out. And just finding one is pretty tough. I mean, the right sort, and then you make mistakes.

[Becky Quick]

Warren, how are you feeling today?

[Warren Buffett]

Well, I, you know, I broke a leg, what happened a few weeks ago. So, which is really, you know, I've been very lucky on that sort of thing. I haven't broken a leg in my life until now. But I, I'm glad I was born and I'm glad I wasn't born in some other country. And I was glad initially that I wasn't born female. And I mean all kinds of things. I mean, I really won the lottery when I came out and other people think they won the lottery if they've got a trust fund set up, one that takes care of them for their whole life and, you know, five generations thereafter. But I just wasn't raised that way and I think it's a good thing I wasn't. And I haven't raised the kids that way or more importantly, didn't raise them that way.

[Becky Quick]

Well, I want to thank you for your time today.

[Warren Buffett]

Thank you.

[Becky Quick]

I appreciate it.

[Warren Buffett]

And we're interested in business.

[Becky Quick]

Thanks for listening to Sweet Squawkpod. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. You'll get conversations like this one with Warren Buffett, plus so much more. I'm Becky Quick. Have a great day. Hey, Fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month?

[Fidelity Representative]

With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs.

[Becky Quick]

Oh, that sounds easier than I thought.

[Fidelity Representative]

You got this?

[Becky Quick]

Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys?

[Fidelity Representative]

You will find them where you left them.

[Becky Quick]

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member nyse, SIPC.