When Warren Buffett announced his retirement in May 2025, the financial world had one question: why Greg Abel?

Abel isn’t flashy. He doesn’t give many interviews. He spent decades running an energy utility company in Des Moines, Iowa — not exactly the glamorous world of Wall Street dealmaking. He coaches youth hockey on weekends. He called his mother every July 1st to discuss Edmonton Oilers roster decisions until she passed away in 2022.

Buffett’s answer was simple: work ethic, loyalty, and an unwavering commitment to Berkshire’s culture. “The time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer,” Buffett said. No fanfare. No drama. Just a quiet recognition that this was the right person for an almost impossibly heavy job.

His BaZi chart explains exactly why.

Born on June 1, 1962, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Abel’s Four Pillars reveal a Day Master of Geng Metal (庚金) — the hardest, most unyielding form of metal in BaZi. Raw iron ore. An unforged sword. Strong in potential, demanding in what it requires to reach that potential.

And this chart puts that metal under enormous, sustained pressure.

The Day Master: Geng Metal 庚金

In BaZi, Geng Metal (庚金) is the hardest, most uncompromising form of metal — raw iron, unrefined ore, the blade before it has been forged. Unlike the polished, refined Xin Metal (辛金), Geng Metal is blunt, powerful, and built for endurance rather than elegance.

Geng Metal people tend to be direct, principled, and deeply committed to the tasks they take on. They don’t perform. They don’t self-promote. They show up, do the work, and keep doing it long after others have stopped. Their strength isn’t inspiration — it’s reliability under sustained pressure.

In Chinese metallurgy, raw metal becomes its strongest form only through fire. The forge doesn’t destroy Geng Metal — it reveals what it was always capable of becoming. This is a chart where the pressure isn’t the problem. The pressure is the point.

Chart Pattern: Seven Killings 七殺格

The Seven Killings pattern (七殺格) is the chart of the person who performs best under pressure — who rises to challenges others find paralyzing, and who produces results precisely because the stakes are high. In classical BaZi, a well-controlled Seven Killings chart produces exceptional leaders: people with the combination of personal toughness, institutional loyalty, and results-orientation that organizations depend on in difficult moments.

The key word is controlled. Seven Killings energy unchecked leads to burnout, physical strain, and unsustainable pressure. Seven Killings energy properly supported — by the right allies, the right structure, the right decade — produces people who outlast everyone around them.

Abel’s career is a forty-year demonstration of what a controlled Seven Killings chart looks like in practice.

The Wealth-to-Officer Flow: Why Loyalty Is Structural

One of the most revealing features of this chart is how its elements connect — not just what’s present, but how they feed each other.

The Year Branch holds Yin Wood (寅) — Indirect Wealth (편재). The Month Stem carries Yi Wood (乙) — Direct Wealth (정재). Both Wealth stars feed directly into the Month Branch Si Fire (巳) — Seven Killings (편관) and Day Branch Wu Fire (午) — Direct Officer (정관).

In BaZi, this is called a Wealth-generating-Officer flow (財生官) — resources flowing directly into the structures of authority and responsibility. It means that in this chart, wealth doesn’t accumulate for personal benefit. It flows immediately into institutional commitment.

This is the saju structure of the company man — not in a diminishing sense, but in the deepest sense. For Abel, the organization isn’t a vehicle for personal ambition. It’s the thing his energy naturally flows toward. His competence, his resources, his discipline — all of it channels into the institution he serves.

Buffett didn’t choose Abel because Abel was the most brilliant investor. He chose him because Abel is constitutionally incapable of treating Berkshire Hathaway as anything other than the primary purpose of his professional life. That’s not a personality trait. It’s a chart structure.

A Structurally Weak Day Master — and What That Really Means

It must be stated clearly: this is a weak Day Master chart (신약). Metal at just 14.4% against Fire at 40% and Wood at 28.9% means the Day Master is outweighed from multiple directions. This is not a chart of comfortable abundance. It’s a chart of sustained pressure.

For a weak Geng Metal chart, the Hour Pillar becomes critically important — it’s the last potential source of support. If the Hour Branch carries Metal (companion energy) or Earth (resource energy), the chart can hold its structure under pressure. Without it, the physical and psychological load becomes genuinely unsustainable over time.

Abel’s birth time is not publicly known. But given what his career looks like — four decades of carrying enormous institutional responsibility without visible signs of collapse — it’s reasonable to infer that his Hour Pillar provides some form of structural support. A chart this pressured, without any support from the Hour, would likely have shown cracks long before reaching the CEO role of the world’s largest conglomerate.

What we do know is that his Luck Pillar decades provided crucial relief at the right moments — and that timing matters enormously for a chart like this.

Luck Pillars: How the Decades Held

★ Current Luck Pillar as of 2026.

The Current Decade: More Output, More Pressure

Abel’s current Luck Pillar — 壬子 (Ren Zi), ages 61–70 — carries Water energy in both Stem and Branch. For a Geng Metal Day Master, Water represents the Eating God and Hurting Officer stars: output, productivity, and active expression of the Day Master’s energy.

On the surface, this looks favorable. And in terms of external results, it likely will be — this is a decade for production, execution, and visible achievement. But for an already-weak Day Master, more output means more drain. The Eating God and Hurting Officer consume the Day Master’s energy to generate results. What the chart produces outwardly comes at a cost inwardly.

The Water also feeds Wood, which feeds Fire — intensifying the Seven Killings and Officer pressure that has defined Abel’s chart from the beginning. The Wealth-generating-Officer flow gets stronger. The institutional commitment deepens. The results accumulate.

But the physical and psychological load increases with it. This is not a decade for rest. For Abel, January 1, 2026 — the day he became CEO of Berkshire Hathaway — was the beginning of the most consequential and demanding chapter of his life.

Key Shen Sha 神殺 · Notable Stars

The General Star (將星殺) active on the Day Pillar echoes what we saw in Buffett’s chart — natural authority that doesn’t need to announce itself. Abel’s leadership style is famously understated. He doesn’t seek the spotlight. The General Star doesn’t need to.

The Lonely Spirit (孤神殺) on the Month Pillar appears alongside the Losing Spirit — a combination that often marks people who carry responsibility that others don’t fully see or understand. Abel spent decades running an energy utility that most people had never heard of, building the operational infrastructure that Berkshire depends on, without public recognition. The Lonely Spirit works quietly, in the background, and keeps the lights on.

The Chart in Three Lines

Who he is: A Geng Metal Day Master — hard, enduring, built for pressure — carrying a weak chart that has spent sixty years learning to convert institutional commitment into results. Not a visionary. An executor.

What drives him: A Wealth-generating-Officer flow that channels his energy directly into institutional loyalty. Seven Killings energy that activates under pressure rather than being paralyzed by it. Four decades inside a single institutional structure that provided the Metal and Earth support his chart needed to function at its ceiling.

What Berkshire gets: The forged sword — not the still water. A leader built not to wait for the perfect moment, but to show up under any conditions and keep the machine running. In a company that runs on long-term stability, that may be exactly what the next chapter requires.

*Birth date sourced from Wikipedia and Britannica (June 1, 1962, Edmonton, Alberta). Birth time unknown — Hour Pillar excluded. Chart calculated using the OndoDestiny BaZi Calculator.