Greg Abel and John Ternus, the incoming CEOs of Berkshire Hathaway and Apple, both recently praised their predecessors' patience and discipline in remarkably similar language. Abel called Warren Buffett's approach defined by "discipline, patience, and judgment," while Ternus highlighted Tim Cook's "thoughtfulness, deliberateness and discipline" in financial decisions. This echo is no accident—both companies have built empires on strategic patience.

Berkshire's patience sits on its balance sheet: it holds almost $380bn in net cash, representing 30% of assets, up from just 10% a decade ago. Abel has stated he won't "deploy capital into subpar opportunities" but will wait for market dislocations. Apple holds $64bn in net cash despite its stated policy of "net cash neutrality," and its capital spending runs about 10% of Microsoft or Alphabet's—deliberately avoiding the data centre gold rush.

The strategy has delivered: Berkshire ranks as the world's 10th most valuable company, Apple 3rd. But risks loom. Berkshire faces a market awash with liquidity, making its traditional crisis-play harder to execute—it's underperformed the S&P 500 by almost a percentage point annually over nearly 20 years. For Apple, the danger is that AI could shift the point of distribution away from devices, undermining its ecosystem stranglehold.

Both new bosses inherit strategies that made their predecessors legendary—but the world may have changed faster than patience can accommodate.