AI Analysis · Q1 2026

Check Capital Management's $3.44B Q1 2026 filing is one of the most concentrated institutional portfolios in the dataset — 68.3% of AUM sits in a single position, Berkshire Hathaway Class B (BRK/B, $2.35B, 4.9M shares), with the remaining 31.7% dispersed across 65 names that read like a deliberate ' Buffett-adjacent ' sleeve: Alphabet ($198M, 5.8%), Brookfield Corp ($177M, 5.2%), Markel ($147M, 4.3%), AerCap Holdings ($112M, 3.3%), First Citizens ($83M, 2.4%), Sirius XM ($68M, 2.0%), LKQ ($56M, 1.6%), Amazon ($43M, 1.2%), Disney ($42M, 1.2%), and Hershey ($40M, 1.2%). The Q1 changes were minimal but meaningful: BRK/B was increased by 281,582 shares (+$26.8M) — the largest dollar addition in the filing — while the manager simultaneously reduced Brookfield Corp by $24.2M (-1.2% shares) and Markel by $19.0M (-2.3%). That pairing — adding to Buffett's vehicle while trimming two names that are themselves Berkshire-style holding companies — suggests the manager is concentrating its 'value-and-insurance' exposure through BRK/B directly rather than through proxies. The other notable moves were a 5,763% increase in Amazon (from 3,481 to 204,087 shares, +$41.7M) — an extraordinary share-count jump that appears to be a correction of a data artifact or an emergency position build — alongside increases in LKQ (+$9.2M), Cimpress (+$7.3M), and Hershey (+$5.3M). The portfolio's sector footprint reflects the BRK/B anchor: 75.6% in financial services (dominated by BRK/B's insurance-and-financial-services business), 5.2% real estate (Brookfield), 3.2% communication services (Sirius XM, Disney, Alphabet), and the remainder scattered across consumer cyclical, consumer defensive, and technology. At 66 holdings with a whaleScore of 78.00, this is a portfolio that has made an explicit, high-conviction bet on BRK/B as its core holding — everything else is tactical overlay.

The Berkshire core needs to be read in context. BRK/B at 68.3% is not a static anchor — the manager added 281,582 shares in Q1, a 6.1% increase that cost $26.8M and made it the single largest dollar deployment in the filing. That is a conviction move, not a rebalance: at this AUM level, adding $26.8M to an already-68%-weighted position implies the manager believes the risk-adjusted expected return on incremental BRK/B is higher than any alternative in the opportunity set. The Berkshire A shares position was held essentially flat at 29 shares ($20.8M), which is a legacy holding — the B share bulk is the active management vehicle. Together the two classes give Check Capital roughly 4.9M B-share equivalents and 29 A shares, a structure that is typical of managers who use BRK/B as their primary treasury-management and capital-allocation proxy.

The satellite sleeve is small but sophisticated. Alphabet ($198M, 5.8%) is the largest non-BRK position and represents a deliberate technology-and-advertising bet that is uncorrelated to Berkshire's insurance-and-operating-company business model. The manager reduced Alphabet by $22.7M in Q1 (-1.9% shares), which alongside the BRK/B increase reads as a reallocation within the large-cap growth slice: selling the higher-multiple, pure-play tech name to fund additional shares of the more diversified Berkshire vehicle. Brookfield Corp ($177M, 5.2%, real estate and alternative assets) was trimmed more aggressively — down $24.2M (-1.2% shares) — and Markel ($147M, 4.3%, insurance and reinsurance) was reduced by $19.0M (-2.3%). Both Markel and Brookfield are names that Buffett admirers often hold as ' Buffett-like ' proxies: Markel is an insurance-and-reinsurance company with a similar float-based investment model, and Brookfield is an alternative-asset manager with a类似于 Berkshire's diversified operating-company approach. The simultaneous reduction of both names while increasing BRK/B directly is the most informative signal in the Q1 delta: the manager has decided that holding the original — Berkshire itself — is more efficient than holding the imitators.

Quarter at a glance — Q1 2026

Top 10 holdings

Filing history