Warren Buffett retiring as Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.A 0.76%) (BRK.B 0.95%) CEO won't mean that his influence will disappear overnight. The legendary investor will remain executive chairman of the conglomerate he has led for six decades.
Importantly, investors can still get great ideas from the portfolio Buffett has built through the years, with some assistance from his trusted investment managers. Here are my picks for the best Buffett stocks to buy with $1,000 right now.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
1. Alphabet
Google parent Alphabet (GOOG 1.33%) (GOOGL 1.38%) is one of the most recent additions to Berkshire's portfolio. Buffett bought around $4.34 billion of the tech giant's Class A shares in the third quarter of 2025.
Berkshire's purchase of Alphabet was a long time coming. In 2017, Buffett stated that he regretted not investing in the stock earlier. Now, Alphabet ranks as the 11th-largest position in his Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.
This stock appears to be an excellent choice for retail investors as well. Alphabet's core advertising business, which includes Google Search, YouTube, and other apps, continues to boom. Although some predicted that generative AI would pose an existential threat to Google Search, Google's integration of the technology has, in fact, boosted search traffic.
Google Cloud has become a particularly important growth driver for Alphabet. The cloud unit has tremendous growth opportunities ahead, with the demand for AI showing no signs of slowing down.
2. Amazon
Buffett has long admired Amazon (AMZN 0.23%). Interestingly, though, he didn't make the initial decision to purchase the stock in 2019. The call was instead made by one of Berkshire's two investment managers. However, Amazon is just as much a Buffett stock as any other stock in Berkshire's portfolio.
Most Americans are familiar with Amazon primarily for its e-commerce business. That's understandable, considering the company's e-commerce market share in the U.S. is roughly 38%. An estimated 200 million people in the U.S. subscribed to Amazon Prime, the company's service that includes free shipping, streaming music and video, and other benefits.
Despite Amazon's e-commerce dominance, this business still has significant growth opportunities. Amazon's share of the global retail market remains at only around 1%. The majority of retail sales are made in physical stores, but e-commerce market penetration continues to increase.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the company's other massive business. It's the leader in the cloud services market and continues to grow robustly. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy believes that AWS' investments in agentic AI will pay off and predicts that "a lot of the future value companies will get from AI will be in the form of agents."
3. UnitedHealth Group
UnitedHealth Group (UNH 1.37%) seemed to be a classic Buffett stock earlier this year. Sure enough, the "Oracle of Omaha" invested in the large health insurer and pharmacy benefit manager in the second quarter of 2025.
What about UnitedHealth appealed to Buffett? Valuation. The stock has fallen significantly this year due to concerns about higher-than-expected medical costs, the withdrawal of its previously issued guidance, and a criminal and civil investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the company's Medicare practices.
However, Buffett probably viewed these as temporary issues that allowed him to buy shares of a solid company at an attractive price. And while he purchased UnitedHealth Group stock in Q2, the healthcare giant's valuation remains at a level that should interest other investors.
The future for UnitedHealth Group should be brighter than its recent past. The company is implementing premium increases in 2026 that will improve its bottom line. Although the DOJ investigation could continue for some time, UnitedHealth has emerged relatively unscathed from previous probes. UnitedHealth appears to be a textbook example of the kind of stock Buffett has bought in the past, achieving market-beating returns.
