Warren Buffett shocks shareholders by announcing his intention to retire at the end of the year

Warren Buffett shocked an arena full of his shareholders Saturday by announcing that he wants to retire at the end of the year.

Buffett said he will recommend to Berkshire Hathaway’s board that Greg Abel should become CEO at the end of the year.

"I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the Chief Executive office of the company at year end,” Buffett said.

Previously the 94-year-old investor has always said he had no plans to retire.

Earlier, Buffett warned Saturday about the dire global consequences of President Donald Trump's tariffs while telling the thousands of investors gathered at his annual meeting that “trade should not be a weapon” but "there's no question that trade can be an act of war.”

Buffett said Trump's trade policies have raised the risk of global instability by angering the rest of the world.

“It’s a big mistake in my view when you have 7.5 billion people who don’t like you very well, and you have 300 million who are crowing about how they have done,” Buffett said as he addressed the topic on everyone's mind at the start of the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.

While Buffett said it is best for trade to be balanced between countries, he doesn't think Trump is going about it the right way with his widespread tariffs. He said the world will be safer if more countries are prosperous.

“We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world. We should do what we do best and they should do what they do best,” he said.

America has been going through revolutionary changes ever since its birth and the promise of equality for all, which wasn't fulfilled until years later, Buffett said. But nothing that is going on today has changed his long-term optimism about the country.

“If I were being born today, I would just keep negotiating in the womb until they said, ‘You could be in the United States,’” Buffett said.

Buffett said he just doesn't see many attractively priced investments that he understands these days, so Berkshire is sitting on $347.7 billion in cash, but he predicted that one day Berkshire will be “bombarded with opportunities that we will be glad we have the cash for.”

Buffett said the recent turmoil in the markets that generated headlines after Trump's tariff announcement last month “is really nothing.” He dismissed the recent drop in the market because he's seen three periods in the last 60 years of managing Berkshire when his company's stock was halved. He cited when the Dow Jones industrial average went from 240 on the day he was born in 1930 down to 41 during the Great Depression as a truly significant drop in the markets. Currently the Dow Jones Industrial Average sits at $41,317.43.