Wall Street has a clear message for Greg Abel, 63, as he prepares to succeed Warren Buffett, 95, as Berkshire Hathaway CEO on January 1: “Don’t try to be Warren Buffett.”

Bill Stone, chief investment officer at wealth management firm Glenview Trust, told Yahoo Finance last week that the most important thing Abel can do is stay away from competing with Buffett. He cautioned that it would be impossible to beat Buffett at his own game.

Instead, Stone encouraged Abel to deliver steady profit growth and smart capital allocation in his own style. He argued that Abel should focus on what he can directly control: He can increase operating earnings. He can also keep an eye out for big opportunities. “Berkshire Hathaway is so big now that you have to find bigger opportunities to move the needle,” Stone said. 

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Meanwhile, Jonathan Boyar, president of Boyar Research, told Yahoo Finance’s Market Dominion last week that Abel has the opportunity to differentiate himself by being more of a hands-on manager than Buffett was. Boyar expects Abel to be more involved with Berkshire’s subsidiaries than Buffett.

Abel will likely “enhance profitability” by consolidating divisions and cutting fat, Boyar said. He pointed out that Buffett was known as the “greatest investor of all time,” but “he’s not known as the best manager of all time,” leaving a gap for Abel to fill. 

Boyar also said Abel could best win Wall Street’s trust by personally buying a large amount of Berkshire stock. That way, Abel would “really put his money where his mouth is,” according to Boyar.

Berkshire’s 2025 proxy statement shows that Abel already owns company stock, about $171 million worth. However, Boyar thinks a new, sizable purchase after taking the top job would send a powerful signal. 

“Buffett has created a business that can basically run itself,” Boyar told Yahoo Finance. “I just want him [Abel] to be a great steward of these assets, to go in and manage them better.”

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Analyst David Jagielski, a writer for The Motley Fool, wrote recently that Abel is “well prepared” for the CEO role. He expects Abel’s overall investing philosophy to stay close to Buffett’s, but with some shifts in the investment portfolio. For example, Abel may target different companies. 

Jagielski pointed to Berkshire’s recent stake in Alphabet as a “glimpse” of a possible tilt towards faster-growing tech names and away from slower holdings like Kraft Heinz. Berkshire’s end-of-third-quarter equity portfolio snapshot, released in November, showed that the company had purchased more than 17.8 million shares of Alphabet, valued at $4.9 billion, during the quarter. 

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