The Securities and Exchange Commission issued long sought after guidance Thursday evening saying it does not deem most meme coins securities under U.S. federal law.

Meme coins “typically have limited or no use or functionality” and are “more akin to collectibles,” according to the agency’s Division of Corporation Finance.

“It is the Division’s view that transactions in the types of meme coins described in this statement do not involve the offer and sale of securities under the federal securities laws,” the statement says. “Persons who participate in the offer and sale of meme coins do not need to register their transactions with the Commission. … Accordingly, neither meme coin purchasers nor holders are protected by the federal securities laws.”

It also said “a meme coin does not constitute any of the common financial instruments specifically enumerated in the definition of ‘security’ because, among other things, it does not generate a yield or convey rights to future income, profits, or assets of a business. In other words, a meme coin is not itself a security.”

The clarification comes after the latest rapid rise of such cryptocurrencies following the election of President Donald Trump, as well as their crash in recent weeks. It’s also another notch in the belt of the new administration, which has promised to create clearer and perhaps more favorable regulatory conditions for the crypto industry, and to do so swiftly.

“The SEC’s recent statement on meme coins is the clarity that the digital asset space has been demanding for years,” said Ishmael Green, a crypto attorney and partner at the law firm Diaz Reus. “This will drive continued investment in the U.S. crypto space, as the vast majority of meme coins launched in the last 12 months with multibillion dollar market caps have been released on Solana, an American blockchain.”

“[It] also comports with the current administration’s promise to the crypto community to end needless and frivolous enforcement actions which stifle innovation and investment,” he added.

Dogecoin, the original meme coin and sixth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 3%. The token tied to Solana, which has become the go-to host for meme coins – including the Official Trump meme coin – rose 2%.

Shares of both Coinbase and Robinhood rose about 1% in after hours trading.

The clarity could pave the way for both exchange operators to list more meme coins without the risk of regulatory enforcement.

In January, at the height of the Trump-fueled meme mania, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that “given there are [about 1 million] tokens a week being created now, and growing … evaluating each one by one is no longer feasible,” in a post on X. “And regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each one is totally infeasible at this point,” he said.

Meme coins, of which there are thousands, sit at the furthest end of the risk spectrum. They’re three to four times more actively traded than bitcoin and ether, adjusting for market cap, which makes them lucrative offerings for newcomers to the market who feel they may have missed the boat on bitcoin. Historically, they’ve been a gauge of retail interest and risk appetite in crypto, though most market participants warn strongly against them.

Despite their purely speculative nature and lack of intrinsic value, they’re widely viewed as a significant sector of the crypto market and an important part of internet culture that reflects the origins, culture and permissionless nature of the crypto community.

Investors continued to dump Palantir shares on Thursday, escalating concerns that the latest hot pick among retail traders could be fizzling out.

Shares of the mysterious technology and defense stock retreated more than 5% on Thursday, regaining some ground in afternoon trading. Still, that builds on Wednesday’s slide of around 10%, which came after shares touched an all-time high earlier in the day and marked the stock’s worst session since May.

Wednesday’s initial decline came as investors keyed in on the CEO’s new stock sale plan and comments from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reported by The Washington Post on plans to slash defense budgets.

Now, the continued downturn raises alarm of a popular stock among retail investors showing signs of petering out. Shares had run up amid investor excitement around artificial intelligence, making Palantir the best performer within the S&P 500 last year.

Palantir has been one of the most-bought securities among everyday investors, data shows. The company seeks out these traders, with executives such as CEO Alex Karp speaking directly to them on earnings calls and in video addresses.

“The activity in Palantir is dominated by retail investors,” said Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson. “The company embraces that and caters to those investors as much or more than any other company.”

Vanda Research found the stock has trailed just Nvidia, Tesla and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) in net inflows from retail investors, according to 2025 data that runs through early February. Palantir was also one of the most-bought stocks by individual traders over the past week, per data from JPMorgan released Wednesday.

Palantir has become a sort of cult favorite among the retail crowd in recent months. The stock shot up more than 60% in November alone as investors evaluated which companies would benefit from President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Layered on top of that is the fact that Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal with Elon Musk, has chaired Palantir’s board for more than two decades. Musk is leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to cut government spending, and there is speculation he could even use Palantir’s technology to help him do it.

The company’s valuation has given some market participants reason for pause, as its 198 forward price-to-earnings multiple far exceeds the S&P 500’s at 22. But sustained devotion from retail investors can actually help justify its lofty valuation, according to D.A. Davidson’s Luria.

“Palantir is trading at an unprecedented premium to other software companies,” Luria said. “The reason is that they have this very loyal retail investor support.”

In other words, Palantir’s valuation makes it a “live-by-the-gun, die-by-the-gun” stock, Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown said Thursday on CNBC’s “Halftime Report.”

Two news items appeared to catalyze the initial pullback on Wednesday.

Hegseth reportedly told Pentagon officials to prepare to slash defense budgets by 8% annually over the next five years, a move that can worry investors about the state of deals between the government and contractors such as Palantir. However, Palantir executives previously said they are optimistic about members of DOGE seeing value in the company’s contributions.

Palantir also disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday night that Karp can sell 10 million shares of the company’s stock over the next six months. His eccentric persona has drawn comparisons to Tesla‘s Musk and is considered to be helping to drive attention and interest among retail investors.

With these declines, the stock is down more than 10% this week. Still, shares are up more than 40% in 2025 after skyrocketing around 340% in the prior year.

While mom-and-pop investors have rushed into the stock, Wall Street isn’t as on board. The average analyst polled by LSEG has a hold rating, with a price target implying shares should drop from here.

Part of this disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street stems from the fact that everyday investors don’t fully understand that “a good product doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good company, and a good company doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good investment,” said Christopher Schwarz, a finance professor at the University of California Irvine who studies retail trader behavior.

Schwarz pointed out that the stock is trading at around 80 times its sales, adding that no company of any size would be considered a smart investment at that rate.

“It’s just crazy expensive — and people just don’t understand that there’s no way they can make money on the stock over the long term,” Schwarz said. “The more it goes up now, the more it’s going to crash in the future.”

An expensive stock market did not prevent traders from getting more bullish as investors increasingly bet that the bull run could keep chugging along, according to Charles Schwab’s new quarterly client survey.

The bulls continue to outnumber the bears among traders 51% to 34%, according to Schwab’s survey, which polled 1,040 active traders last month. Young traders under the age of 40 especially showed a spike in optimism, with bullishness jumping to 59%. That compares to 47% in the fourth quarter. The positive sentiment came even as two-thirds of the traders believe the market is overvalued, the survey said.

“It’s clear that the majority of traders believe there’s some froth in the market but on balance they also feel like there’s still more room for the bulls to run,” said James Kostulias, head of trading services at Charles Schwab. “More than half of traders plan to move additional money into stocks in Q1,” Kostulias added.

While bullishness indicates positive views on the market, it can also be seen as a contrary indicator when there are signs of excess.

After a booming two-year period in which the S&P 500 climbed more than 50%, the momentum has slowed as of late with rising concerns about an economic slowdown and heightened volatility from rapid policy changes from the new administration. The equity benchmark is only up 1.3% on the year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has dipped into negative territory for 2025.

In terms of sectors, traders are most bullish on energy, tech, finance and utilities. These sectors are typically beneficiaries under the Trump administration due to potential deregulation.

The survey also detected a significant drop in the number of traders who believe a recession will occur in the U.S. Only a third of the respondents called it “somewhat likely,” compared to 54% in the prior quarter.

The majority of traders also did not see a reacceleration in inflation, with two-thirds of them seeing price pressures holding steady.

Business: Liberty Live Group is a tracking stock that represents Liberty Media Group’s ownership stake in Live Nation Entertainment. Live Nation operates as a live entertainment company worldwide. It operates through the following segments” Concerts, Ticketing, and Sponsorship & Advertising. The Concerts segment promotes live music events in its owned or operated venues, and in rented third-party venues. The Ticketing segment manages the ticketing operations, including the provision of ticketing software and services to clients and consumers with a marketplace for tickets and event information through mobile apps, other websites, retail outlets and its primary websites: livenation.com and ticketmaster.com. The Sponsorship & Advertising segment sells international, national and local sponsorships, as well as the placement of advertising and promotional programs.

Stock Market Value: ~$7B ($75.85 per share)

Ownership: 5.51%

Average Cost: $51.17

Activist Commentary: ValueAct has been a premier corporate governance investor for over 20 years. ValueAct principals are generally on the boards of half of the firm’s core portfolio positions and have had 56 public company board seats over 23 years. Additionally, the firm is a long-term, thoughtful and diligent investor known for creating value behind the scenes. ValueAct has previously commenced 105 activist campaigns and has an average return of 55.02% versus 21.76% for the Russell 2000.

ValueAct filed a 13D on Feb. 11, reporting a 5.51% position in Liberty Live Group (LLYVA).

Liberty Live (LLYVA) is a tracking stock that represents Liberty Media Group’s 30% ownership stake in Live Nation (LYV), a global live entertainment company. John Malone’s Liberty Media Group has historically used tracking stocks as a huge part of the company’s toolbox to allow investors to have a more focused exposure to the businesses they liked without having to jump through the legal and tax hoops of a spinoff. He used this in the past with the Atlanta Braves and Sirius XM, and he presently uses it with Live Nation and F1. ValueAct has taken a 5.51% position in Liberty Live, but it also owns a 0.44% stake in Live Nation, bringing the firm’s effective ownership of Live Nation to approximately 2%, which would make it a top shareholder. 

There are two characteristics that are core to ValueAct’s investing philosophy and that permeate many of its investments: First, the firm likes companies that it thinks are somewhat misunderstood by the market. Second, it’s a long-term investor that can tolerate short-term pain. Both of those aspects are present here. As an active shareholder of Spotify, ValueAct has seen firsthand how the music industry has transformed over the last several years. It is much easier today for a talented artist to build a global following through streaming services and the marketing power of social media, but the monetization that follows is not as easy. The payouts from streaming services are relatively meager and just get smaller as additional artists are added to the platforms. As a result, live performances and touring have become the most lucrative ways for artists to earn – and Live Nation dominates this market. The company owns all facets of this ecosystem, which allows Live Nation to manage an artist’s entire tour without any external involvement. Other than private peer Anschutz Entertainment Group, no company comes close in scale, and even Anschutz lacks the full vertical integration of Live Nation. However, while this dominance is certainly an asset, it can also be viewed as a liability by some, mainly the U.S. Department of Justice.

In May 2024, the DOJ sued to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, sending the stock down about 8% from $101.40 to $93.48. While this development may cause a lot of investors to run in fear, ValueAct saw it as a buying opportunity in a great company that was having a market overreaction. The firm invested in Microsoft during concerns over the PC market, in Spotify when people thought streaming was dying and in Disney during the writers’ strike, so it is no surprise that the firm saw an opportunity in Live Nation at a time of heightened uncertainty. The worst thing that the DOJ could do is force the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, a structural remedy that is rarely resorted to by the Justice Department (AT&T’s 1984 breakup being a notable exception). It is more likely that Live Nation agrees to certain changes like amending its venue booking policies and shortening the length of Ticketmaster contracts to allow for more competition to assuage the DOJ. However, even if the worst case happens and the two companies separate, Live Nation stockholders would own two great businesses with strong tailwinds and best-in-class market positioning. It would likely even be another buying opportunity for investors like ValueAct.

The final piece of hidden or misunderstood value at the company is its venue expansion. While in major U.S. cities with NBA and NHL teams, there are massive arenas for concerts, in other cities and globally there are not nearly as many readily available venues. Looking to address this gap, Live Nation is pursuing these projects, successfully developing the University of Texas at Austin’s new arena and working on similar projects around the world. As a result, the company has been dedicating a lot of capex to its venue expansion goals: Capex has increased by 48% over the past two years and total debt has tripled since 2015 and has almost doubled since 2019. Moreover, the company’s disclosure around this has been somewhat opaque adding to more market confusion and uncertainty. Building these venues is expensive in the short term but should pay off handsomely in the long term, a dynamic that ValueAct is familiar with. Consider that the firm invested in Adobe when it was converting from a product purchase to a subscription, sending short-term revenue down but creating significant long-term value. Owning these venues will give Live Nation more value to its clients and more revenue from venues (as opposed to renting venues). As these venues are built and utilized, investors will start realizing that there will be a good return on the investment.  

Assuming the thesis above is accurate, there is significant value to be had by buying the tracking stock or the common shares of Live Nation. So, why buy the tracking stock? The answer is because the tracking stock trades at a sharp discount to Live Nation, and it could provide even more value above and beyond the fundamental undervaluation of the business if this discount goes away. That would happen if the same plan were followed as with previous Liberty tracking stocks such as Sirius. Liberty Media has already announced plans to spin off Liberty Live into a separate public company later this year, which is what it did with Sirius. At that time, the Liberty Live discount should compress a little but will only go away entirely if merged into Live Nation. That is what eventually happened with Sirius. For many reasons, including the relationship between John Malone and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, we think the spinoff and subsequent merger will take less time. ValueAct is the kind of investor that is happy holding for five years or more as value is being created.

Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D Monitor, an institutional research service on shareholder activism, and the founder and portfolio manager of the 13D Activist Fund, a mutual fund that invests in a portfolio of activist 13D investments.

Expanding two power plants in Georgia and South Carolina with big, new reactors was supposed to spark a “nuclear renaissance” in the U.S. after a generation-long absence of new construction. 

Instead, Westinghouse Electric Co.’s state-of-the-art AP1000 design resulted in long delays and steep cost overruns, culminating in its bankruptcy in 2017.  The fall of Westinghouse was a major blow for an industry that the company had helped usher in at the dawn of the nuclear age. It was Westinghouse that designed the first reactor to enter commercial service in the U.S., at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957. 

Two new AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Georgia, started operating in 2023 and 2024, turning the plant into the largest energy generation site of any kind in the nation and marking the first new operational nuclear reactor design in 30 years. But the reactors came online seven years behind schedule and $18 billion over budget.

In the wake of Westinghouse’s bankruptcy, utilities in South Carolina stopped construction in 2017 on two reactors at the V.C. Summer plant near Columbia after sinking $9 billion into the project. 

But today, interest in new nuclear power is reviving as the tech sector seeks reliable, carbon-free electricity to power its artificial intelligence ambitions, especially against China. Westinghouse emerged from bankruptcy in 2018 and was acquired by Canadian uranium miner Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management in November 2023.

The changed environment means South Carolina sees an opportunity to finish the two reactors left partially built at V.C. Summer eight years ago. The state’s Santee Cooper public utility in January began seeking a buyer for the site to finish reactor construction, citing data center demand as one of the reasons to move ahead.

“We are extraordinarily bullish on the case for V.C. Summer,” Dan Lipman, president of energy systems at Westinghouse, told CNBC in an interview. “We think completing that asset is vital, doable, economic, and we will do everything we can to assist Santee Cooper and the state of South Carolina with implementing a decision that results in the completion of the site.”

Tech as a nuclear catalyst

The United States has tried to revive nuclear power for a quarter century, but the two reactors in Georgia mark the only entirely new construction across that period despite bipartisan support under every president from George W. Bush to Donald Trump.

A fresh start was supposed to have begun more than a decade ago, but was choked off by a wave of closures of older reactors as nuclear struggled to compete against a boom of cheap natural gas created by the shale revolution.

“We went from an environment in the aughts of rising gas imports and rising gas prices to fracking technology unlocking quite a bit of affordable natural gas here in the U.S., and companies didn’t really value the firm clean attribute of nuclear back then,” said John Kotek of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group, and former assistant secretary at the Office of Nuclear Energy under President Barack Obama.

What’s different in 2025 is the tech sector’s voracious appetite for power translating into a willingness to pay a premium for nuclear. But recent investments in nuclear have focused on restarting abandoned reactors and attempting to bring online smaller, next-generation modular reactors that many believe are the future, if they can be designed and built more cheaply.

The troubled nuclear plant at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that almost melted down in 1979 is expected to resume operations in 2028 after owner Constellation Energy struck a power purchase agreement with Microsoft last September. Constellation wants to restart Unit 1, which shut for economic reasons in 2019, not the Unit 2 reactor that was the site of the accident.

Alphabet and Amazon invested in small nuclear reactors a month later. Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook and Instagram, asked developers in December to submit proposals for up to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear power to meet the energy needs of its data centers.

But while the recent focus in the U.S. has been on restarts and commercializing small reactors, Lipman said the extent of potential demand that has emerged from data centers over the past year has led to renewed interest in Westinghouse’s large AP1000 reactor design.

In any event, there are no operational small reactors in the U.S. today, though startups and industry stalwarts, including Westinghouse, are racing to commercialize the technology. And there only so many shuttered plants in the U.S. in good enough shape to potentially be restarted.

Gargantuan undertaking

Meanwhile, meeting the demand for power is a gargantuan undertaking. Meta’s need for new nuclear power, for example, is nearly equivalent to the entire 4.8 gigawatts of generating capacity at the Vogtle plant, enough to power more than 2 million homes and businesses. Large nuclear plants with a gigawatt or more of capacity — the size of the AP1000 — will be essential to power large industrial sites like data centers because of their economies of scale and low production costs once they’re up and running, according to a recent Department of Energy report.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called for another reactor at Vogtle the same day he dedicated the plant expansion in May 2024. Southern Company CEO Chris Womack believes at least 10 gigawatts of large nuclear are needed. Southern is the parent company of Georgia Power, which operates Vogtle.

“The people that are going to own and operate AP1000s traditionally are investor-owned electric utilities,” Lipman said. “When they look at the marketplace for a large reactor, AP1000 is where they turn because it’s got a license, it’s operational.”

Still, nobody in the U.S. is on the verge of signing an order for a new AP1000, he said. Westinghouse is focused on deploying reactors in Eastern and Central Europe, where nuclear projects are seen as a national security necessity to counter dependency on Russian natural gas after the invasion of Ukraine.

In addition to the two units in Georgia, Westinghouse also has four operational reactors in China.

But South Carolina’s search for someone to complete the partially built reactors at V.C. Summer will likely draw investment from Big Tech “hyperscalers” building data centers, and large manufacturers like the auto industry, Lipman said.

“That kind of asset attracts industry that relies on 24/7, 365 energy and that’s what you get with an AP1000,” Lipman said. There are ongoing discussions within the industry about whether the tech sector might act as a developer that invests capital in the upfront costs of building new plants, he said.

What went wrong in the South

Any attempt to build new AP1000s in the U.S. again will almost certainly meet with skepticism after the experiences in South Carolina and Georgia.

Lipman said the challenges that the AP1000 construction faced in the South have been resolved. Back then, Westinghouse agreed to the projects before the reactor design was complete, and supply chains weren’t fully formed due to a long period in which U.S. construction was dormant, he said.

“One big lesson learned, maybe the big lesson learned, is designs need to be complete before they hit the field, meaning they have to be shovel ready,” Lipman said. The design for the AP1000 is complete and Westinghouse has its supply chain in place, he said.

“We have winnowed over our list of suppliers,” Lipman said. “They are supporting us globally, and so it’s really easy then to have them make more equipment for deployment.”

“You’re getting economies of scale,” he said.

Ironically, given the overruns in Georgia, the original aim of AP1000 was reduce costs by creating a standardized design that requires less construction materials compared to older reactor types, Lipman said. Components of the plant are prefabricated before being assembled on site, he said.

“You basically assemble, kit-like, major portions of the plant in a modular fashion, a bit like aircraft and submarines are done,” Lipman said. “That was not fully shaken out completely at the Vogtle site.”

The Department of Energy under the Biden administration argued in a September report that future AP1000 builds should be less expensive because they won’t incur costs associated with the first-of-a-kind project in Georgia. Support from the department’s loan office, tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, and shorter construction timelines would substantially reduce costs, according to the report.

Trump plans for nuclear

While President Donald Trump is supportive of nuclear, it’s unclear whether the industry will receive support through DOE loans and the investment tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Those tools were pillars of the Biden administration’s plan to help reduce the cost of new AP1000s.

Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office that directed federal agencies to remove obstacles to development of nuclear energy resources. The same order, however, paused all spending under the IRA. Two weeks later, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright made commercializing “affordable and abundant nuclear energy” a priority in a Feb. 5 order.

“The long talked about nuclear renaissance is finally going to happen, that is a priority for me personally and for President Trump and this administration,” Wright told CNBC in a Feb. 7 interview. Wright was previously a board member of Oklo, a nuclear startup that aims to disrupt the status quo of the industry by deploying micro reactors later this decade.

Wright emphasized commercializing small reactors and said private capital would drive the construction of new plants. Before the November election, Trump was skeptical of building large reactors, citing the canceled project in South Carolina.

“They get too big and too complex and too expensive,” he told Joe Rogan in an October interview.

Lipman said the first Trump administration was pro-nuclear, and he expects the president will support the industry in his second term.

“If there’s going to be gigawatt scale deployment in the U.S., decision making needs to accelerate,” Lipman said. “The business model, the investment climate, any legislative changes that might be in the offing at the state level or the federal, now is the time to address those pertinent issues.”

— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.

The mystery over Warren Buffett’s surprisingly defensive stance deepened over the weekend.

The 94-year-old CEO of Berkshire Hathaway sold more stocks in the latest quarter and grew a record cash pile even larger to $334 billion, but failed to explain in his highly anticipated annual letter why the investor known for his astute equity purchases over time was seemingly battening down the hatches.

Instead Buffett said that this posture in no way represented a move away from his love for stocks.

“Despite what some commentators currently view as an extraordinary cash position at Berkshire, the great majority of your money remains in equities,” Buffett wrote in the 2024 annual letter released Saturday. “That preference won’t change.”

Berkshire’s monstrous ownership of cash has raised questions among shareholders and observers especially as interest rates are expected to fall from their multi-year highs. The Berkshire CEO and chairman in recent years has expressed frustration about an expensive market and few buying opportunities. Some investors and analysts have grown impatient with the lack of action and have sought an explanation why.

Despite his repeated selling of stock, Buffett said Berkshire will continue to prefer equities to cash.

“Berkshire shareholders can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities – mostly American equities although many of these will have international operations of significance,” Buffett wrote. “Berkshire will never prefer ownership of cash-equivalent assets over the ownership of good businesses, whether controlled or only partially owned.”

Shareholders will have to wait a little longer it seems as the Omaha-based conglomerate net sold equities for a ninth consecutive quarter in the final period of last year, according to the company’s annual report, which was also released on Saturday.

All told, Berkshire sold more than $134 billion worth of stocks in 2024. This is mainly due to the shrinking of Berkshire’s two largest equity holdings — Apple and Bank of America.

Meanwhile, it appears Buffett is not finding his own stock attractive either. Berkshire continued its buyback halt, repurchasing no shares in the fourth quarter or in the first quarter through Feb. 10.

This is despite a massive increase in operating earnings reported by the conglomerate on Saturday.

Buffett’s sitting on his hands amid a raging bull market that’s seen the S&P 500 gain more than 20% for two years in a row and move into the green again so far this year. Some cracks have begun to develop in the past week, however, with some concerns growing about a slowing economy, volatility from rapid policy changes from new President Donald Trump and overall stock valuations.

Berkshire shares were up 25% and 16% respectively the last two years and are up 5% so far this year.

Buffett did offer perhaps a small hint about stock valuations being a concern in the letter.

“We are impartial in our choice of equity vehicles, investing in either variety based upon where we can best deploy your (and my family’s) savings,” wrote Buffett. “Often, nothing looks compelling; very infrequently we find ourselves knee-deep in opportunities.”

In this year’s letter, Buffett did endorse designated successor Greg Abel in his ability to pick equity opportunities, even comparing him to the late Charlie Munger.

“Often, nothing looks compelling; very infrequently we find ourselves knee-deep in opportunities. Greg has vividly shown his ability to act at such times as did Charlie,” Buffett said.

At last year’s annual meeting, Buffett surprised many by announcing that Abel, vice-chairman of non-insurance operations, will have the final say on all Berkshire’s investing decisions, including overseeing the public stock portfolio.

Some investors and analysts have speculated Buffett’s conservative moves in the last year are not a market call, but him preparing the company for Abel by paring outsized positions and building up cash for him to deploy one day.

Buffett did signal he would be deploying capital in one area: the five Japanese trading houses he began buying nearly six years go.

“Over time, you will likely see Berkshire’s ownership of all five increase somewhat,” he wrote.

Shares of cruise lines tumbled Thursday after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested the Trump administration would crack down on taxes paid by the companies.

“You ever see a cruise ship with an American flag on the back?” Lutnick said in an appearance late Wednesday on Fox News.

“None of them pay taxes … every supertanker. None pay taxes … all foreign alcohol. No taxes. This is going to end under Donald Trump,” said Lutnick.

Shares of Carnival dropped 5.9%, Royal Caribbean lost 7.6%, Norwegian Cruise Line fell 4.9% and Viking Holdings weakened by 3%.

Analysts at Stifel Financial called the selling in cruise stocks a “massive overreaction,” and recommended investors use the slump to buy the names “on weakness.”

“[T]his is probably the tenth time in the last 15 years we have seen a politician (or other D.C. bureaucrat) talk about changing the tax structure of the cruise industry,” wrote analysts led by Steven Wieczynski. “Each time it was presented, it didn’t get very far.”

“[F]om a tax standpoint the cruise industry is embedded under the cargo industry in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service,” Stifel wrote. “That would mean the entire cargo industry would have to be turned upside down even before they got to the cruise industry, which is a sliver of the size of the cargo industry.”

The cruise industry might respond by moving their corporate headquarters outside the U.S., reducing the number of jobs kept in the U.S., the report said. “With 90%+ of their business being conducted in international waters, it would then be impossible for the U.S. (or any other entity) to target the cruise operators.”

Stifel has buy recommendations on six cruise industry stocks: Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Viking as well as Lindblad Expeditions Holdings and OneSpaWorld Holdings.

“Cruise lines pay substantial taxes and fees in the U.S.— to the tune of nearly $2.5 billion, which represents 65% of the total taxes cruise lines pay worldwide, even though only a very small percentage of operations occur in U.S. waters,” said the Cruise Lines International Association, in a statement. “Foreign flagged ships that visit the U.S. are treated the same for taxation purposes as U.S. flagged ships visiting foreign ports, which provides consistent reciprocal treatment across international shipping.”

GameStop CEO and billionaire investor Ryan Cohen has increased his personal stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to roughly 7 million shares worth about $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal said the sizable stake in Alibaba is a bullish bet on China’s economic growth in the long run.

Cohen wasn’t immediately available when CNBC reached out for comment.

The news came after the Chinese titan posted a sharp profit hike in the December quarter amid strength in its Cloud Intelligence unit and e-commerce segment. Shares of Alibaba surged 8.1% on Thursday.

In 2023, the investor urged Alibaba to increase buybacks as he believed the stock was severely undervalued, the Journal said.

Alibaba’s outspoken founder, Jack Ma, who has largely kept out of the public eye since 2020, was among the entrepreneurs who attended a rare closed-door meeting headed by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, during which the Beijing leader urged private businesses to “show their talents” and strengthen their confidence in a “new era” for their activity.

Cohen became CEO of meme stock GameStop after his involvement in the video game retailer partly triggered a historic trading mania on Wall Street in 2021. The investor, who co-founded Chewy, has been leading a turnaround in the brick-and-mortar retailer over the past few years.

Under Cohen’s leadership, GameStop has focused on cutting costs and streamlining operations to ensure the business is profitable even though it is not growing. Earlier this month, CNBC reported GameStop was considering investing in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

— Click here to read the WSJ story.

President Donald Trump promised to unleash U.S. energy dominance, but his sweeping executive order targeting wind power puts a pipeline of projects at risk that would generate enough electricity for millions of American homes.

The order Trump issued on his first day in office indefinitely paused new offshore wind leases in U.S. coastal waters and halted new permits pending the completion of a review. The order jeopardizes proposed projects on the East Coast that have not yet secured permits totaling 32 gigawatts of power, according to data from the consulting firm Aurora Energy Research.

“At the moment, it’s really hard to see how any of these projects will be able to move forward,” said Artem Abramov, head of new energies research at the consultancy Rystad. Like Aurora, Rystad estimates that around 30 gigawatts of projects on the U.S. East Coast are at risk.

Those projects, if realized, would provide enough combined power for more than 12 million homes in the U.S., according a CNBC analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration. The order is not expected to impact projects under construction totaling about 5 gigawatts, according to Aurora.

Trump has abandoned commitments made during the Biden administration to fight climate change, withdrawing the U.S. for a second time from the Paris agreement. He has focused on boosting fossil fuel production, opening U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas leasing on the same day he withdrew those waters for wind.

Trump’s order will jeopardize the efforts of states in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast to transition away from fossil fuels and decarbonize their electric grid, Abramov said. New York, New Jersey and Virginia, for example, have ambitious clean energy goals adopted at the state level. But they are too far north to rely on solar with battery for power, Abramov said.

“If you want to achieve the future where the power generation in New York or New Jersey or Virginia is completely fossil free, if that’s the ultimate goal, there are not so many alternatives to offshore wind,” Abramov said.

The order could ultimately force states to rely more on carbon-emitting natural gas, according to Rystad and Aurora. But it is virtually impossible for a state like New York to meet its climate goals and ensure an adequate energy supply, particularly downstate in the New York City metro area, without offshore wind, said Julia Hoos, who heads Aurora’s U.S. East division.

Power projects waiting in line to connect to the electric grid in downstate New York through 2027 are almost entirely wind and transmission, Hoos said.

“There is virtually no possibility to bring online new gas in the next 18 to 24 months, unless there’s a significant reform or there’s some sort of fast track to bring online that gas, so you really can run into reliability issues,” Hoos said.

But more natural gas generation will likely be built later in the decade on the back of Trump’s policies, Hoos said. Investor sentiment was already shifting toward gas before the election results due in part to the need for reliable power to meet demand from artificial intelligence data centers, Abramov said.

Two weeks after Trump’s order, New Jersey decided against moving forward for now with the Atlantic Shores project, which stood to become the first offshore wind development in the state. The state utilities board cited “uncertainty driven by federal actions and permitting” and European oil major Shell pulling out of the project.

“The offshore wind industry is currently facing significant challenges, and now is the time for patience and prudence,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement backing the board’s decision.

Murphy, who has set a goal to achieve 100% clean energy in New Jersey by 2035, said he hoped “the Trump Administration will partner with New Jersey to lower costs for consumers, promote energy security, and create good-paying construction and manufacturing jobs.”

Offshore wind in the U.S. “has come to a stop, more or less with immediate effect” in the wake of Trump’s order, Vestas Wind Energy Systems CEO Henrik Andersen told investors on the company’s Feb. 5 earnings call. Denmark’s Vestas is one of the world’s leaders in manufacturing and servicing wind turbines.

Trump’s order deepens the challenges of an industry that was already facing an uncertain outlook after years growth.

Wind has surged as power source in the U.S. over the past 25 years from 2.4 gigawatts of installed generating capacity to 150 gigawatts by April 2024, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Generation from wind hit a record that month, surpassing coal-fired power. Wind currently represents about 11% of total U.S. power generation.

But the industry has struggled against supply chain bottlenecks and high interest rates. Offshore wind was already the the most expensive form of renewable energy, Abramov said. Developers in the U.S. have faced a lot of cost certainty due to the challenges of building on water as opposed to land, Hoos said.

“The industry was hoping that the cost would come down,” Abramov said. “We haven’t seen any projects in the United States which was able to achieve lower levelized cost of energy.”

The world’s largest offshore wind developer, Denmark’s Orsted, decided on Feb. 5 to ditch its goal to install up to 38 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Orsted also slashed its investment program through the end of the decade by about 25% to range of 210 to 230 billion Danish crowns (about $29 billion to $32 billion), down from 270 billion crowns previously.

Orsted’s Sunrise Wind and Revolution wind projects that are under construction offshore New York and New England respectively should not be impacted by Trump’s order, CEO Rasmus Errboe told investors the company’s company’s Feb. 6 earnings call. Future developments, however, may be at risk.

“We are fully committed to moving them forward and deliver on our commitments,” Errboe said. “We do not expect that the executive order will have any implications on assets under construction, but of course for assets under development, it’s potentially a different situation.”

The order also should not impact Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, the largest such project under construction in the U.S. at 2.6 gigawatts of power, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue told investors on the utility’s Feb. 12 earning call.

“Stopping it would be the most inflationary action that could be taken with respect to energy in Virginia,” Blue said. “It’s needed to power that growing data center market we’ve been talking about, critical to continuing U.S. superiority in AI and technology.”

The wind industry lobby group American Clean Power in a Jan. 20 statement described Trump’s order as a blanket measure that will jeopardize domestic energy development and harm American businesses and workers. The president’s order contradicts the administration’s goal to reduce bureaucracy and unleash energy production, ACP CEO Jason Grumet said in the statement.

The ACP is now trying to get clarity from the Trump administration on how the executive order will be implemented, said Frank Macchiarola, the group’s chief advocacy officer. It’s unclear, for example, when the review of permit and lease practices will be complete, Macchiarola said.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department simply said the department is implementing Trump’s executive order when asked for comment on a detailed list of questions. When asked when the review of permit and lease practices will be complete, the spokesperson said any estimate would be hypothetical.

The wind industry is committed to working with the Trump administration, supports the president’s push for energy dominance agenda and is making the case that renewables have a key role to play in that agenda as the largest new source of electricity in the U.S., Macchiarola said.

“When past administrations have chosen to stifle American energy development that has been almost universally viewed as a mistake,” Macchiarola said.

Onshore wind permitting has also been halted pending the review, but the part of the industry is unlikely to face a substantial impact, Rystad’s Abramov said. Wind farms onshore are almost entirely built on private rather than federal land, he said. The market is also already saturated and adding capacity is largely dependent on building out more energy storage first, the analyst said.

Offshore wind, however, is a much less mature market in the U.S. and was viewed as major growth opportunity for the industry, Abramov said. But that appears to changing rapidly.

“They don’t see the U.S. as a market for continuous offshore wind expansion as long as this order is in place,” the analyst said.

— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.

During Mettler-Toledo‘s earnings call earlier this month, executives found themselves fielding a barrage of questions about one key topic: tariffs.

The Ohio-based maker of industrial scales and laboratory equipment had already opened the call by breaking down the expected impact from President Donald Trump’s still-evolving trade policy. But when the event transitioned to the question-and-answer portion, the inquiries from analysts seeking further detail about potential tariffs were constant.

“Uncertainty remains across many of our core markets and the global economy,” Finance Chief Shawn Vadala said on the Feb. 7 call. “Geopolitical tensions remain elevated, and include the potential for new tariffs that we have not factored into our guidance.”

Mettler-Toledo’s experience wasn’t unique. America’s largest companies are getting inundated with queries about how or if Trump’s salvo of promises on issues ranging from international trade to immigration and diversity will alter businesses.

A CNBC analysis shows multiple core themes tied to Trump’s policies are popping up on the earnings calls of S&P 500-listed companies at an increasing clip. Take “tariff.” Just weeks into the new year, the frequency of the word and its variations on earnings calls hit its highest level since 2020 — the last full year of Trump’s first term.

On top of that, new acronyms and phrases, like the “Gulf of America” or “DOGE,” have found their way into these meetings as the business community assesses what Trump’s return to power means for them.

Curiously, Trump himself wasn’t racking up mentions on these calls. Many uses of the word “trump” in transcripts reviewed by CNBC referred to the verb, rather than the president.

Still, a review of call transcripts shows how key words tied to Trump’s policies have quickly become commonplace. With the first earnings season of 2025 more than 75% complete, the comments offer an early glimpse into how these companies view the new administration.

One of the most talked about policies has been Trump’s tariff plans. The president briefly implemented — and then postponed — 25% taxes on imports to the U.S. from Mexico and Canada. He also separately slapped China with a 10% levy and imposed aluminum and steel tariffs. Then, on Thursday, he discussed a plan to impose retaliatory tariffs on other trading partners on a country-by-country basis.

Given the uncertainty, it’s no surprise tariffs are a hot topic. The topic has come up on more than 190 calls held by S&P 500 companies in 2025, putting it on track to see the highest share in half of a decade.

The frequency picked up late last year as Trump’s return to the White House became clear. About half of calls in 2024 that mentioned forms of the word took place in the fourth quarter, according to a CNBC analysis of data from FactSet, a market research service.

“Studying tariffs has been at the top of the list of things that we’ve been doing,” said Marathon Petroleum CEO Maryann Mannen on the energy company’s Feb. 4 earnings call.

Several companies said they were not factoring potential impacts from these levies into their guidance, citing uncertainty about what orders will actually go into place. Others just aren’t sure: At Martin Marietta Materials, CFO James Nickolas said the supplier’s profits could either benefit or take a hit from tariffs depending on what form ultimately takes effect.

While Generac didn’t calculate how these import taxes could affect future performance, CEO Aaron Jagdfeld said the generator maker is ready to mitigate the financial hit by reducing costs elsewhere and raising its prices. Camden Property Trust CEO Richard Campo said a company analysis shows proposed tariffs would push up costs for materials from Canada and Mexico like lumber and electrical boxes. These comments offer support to the idea that Trump’s tariffs may drive up consumer prices and fan inflation.

Zebra Technologies CFO Nathan Winters said price increases could help mitigate profit pressure. Auto parts maker BorgWarner, meanwhile, anticipates another year of declining demand in certain markets, which CFO Craig Aaron attributed in part to potential headwinds from these levies.

Cisco‘s R. Scott Herren agreed with other executives on the lack of clarity, describing the tariff situation as “dynamic” on the networking equipment maker’s earnings call last week. Still, the CFO said the company has planned for some variation of Trump’s tariff proposals to take effect and is expecting costs to increase as a result.

“We’ve game planned out several scenarios and steps we could take depending on what actually goes into effect,” he said.

The topic of immigration, meanwhile, has already come up on the highest share of calls since 2017.

Trump has promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants during his second term in office. Cracking down on immigration has been a core component of Trump’s political messaging since he ran in part to “build the wall” between the U.S. and Mexico for his first term. Critics assert that his plans would shock the labor market and could result in higher inflation.

Immigration mentions tend to tick up during the first year of a new administration, CNBC data shows. But 2025 has surpassed the first years of Joe Biden’s presidency and Barack Obama’s second term, underscoring Trump’s role in elevating the issue within U.S. businesses.

Some companies grouped immigration with tariffs as drivers of broader unpredictability within the economy. Nicholas Pinchuk, CEO of toolmaker Snap-On, described anecdotes of strong demand for repair services from its clients, but said they were still stressed by red flags in the economic backdrop.

“It’s clear the techs are in a good position. But that doesn’t make them immune to the macro uncertainty around them: ongoing wars, immigration disputes, lingering inflation,” Pinchuk said. “Although the election is in the rear mirror and the new team may be more focused on business expansion, there’s a rapid fire of new initiatives. … It’s hard not to be uncertain about what’s up.”

Firms in a variety of sectors took questions about what changes in the composition of America’s population would mean. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all fielded questions about whether a slowdown in immigration would hurt demand for certain phone plans. Michael Manelis, operations chief at apartment manager Equity Residential, said in response to an immigration-related inquiry that it hasn’t seen any upticks in lease breaks from tenants being deported.

In the Southern California market, real estate developer Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam said deportations can decrease the pool of workers and, in turn, drive up employment costs in the region. That can exacerbate pricing pressures already expected as the Los Angeles community rebuilds in the wake of last month’s wildfires.

Other businesses insisted deportations wouldn’t create labor shortages for their operations because all of their workers are legally authorized. One such company, chicken producer Tyson Foods, said it hasn’t had factories visited by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or seen any declines in worker attendance.

“We’re confident that we’ll be able to continue to successfully run our business,” CEO Donnie King said on Feb. 3.

Topics that gained newfound relevance with Trump’s return to office have also already started emerging.

DOGE — the acronym for the new Department of Government Efficiency led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk — has been mentioned on more than 15 calls, as of Friday morning. This department has put Wall Street on alert as investors wonder if contracts between public companies and federal agencies could be on the chopping block with Musk’s team slashing spending.

Iron Mountain‘s mine that stores government retirement records was ripped as an example of inefficiency by Musk during a visit to the Oval Office. But surprisingly, CEO Bill Meaney said the push for streamlining can actually benefit other parts of its business.

“As the government continues to drive to be more efficient, we see this as a continued opportunity for the company,” he said last week.

Executives at Palantir, the defensive technology company that was a top performer within the S&P 500 last year, are similarly hopeful. Technology Chief Shyam Sankar described Palantir’s work with the government as “operational” and “valuable,” and is hopeful that DOGE engineers will be “able to see that for a change.”

“I think DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government, and that’s exactly what our commercial business is,” Sankar said during the company’s Feb. 3 call. “The commercial market is meritocratic and transparent, and you see the results that we have in that sort of environment. And that’s the basis of our optimism around this.”

He noted some concerns among other government software providers, and called those agreements “sacred cows of the deep state” during the call.

Elsewhere, the so-called Gulf of America has been a point of divergence after Trump’s executive order renaming what has long been known as the Gulf of Mexico. Chevron used the moniker Gulf of America repeatedly in its earnings release and on its call with analysts late last month. But Exxon Mobil, which held its earnings call the same day, opted instead to refer to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.