Warren Buffett is not known to invest regularly in ASX shares.
But the principles that made him the world's greatest investor apply just as well to the Australian market as to Wall Street.
Buy businesses with wide economic moats. Look for exceptional management with a track record of smart capital allocation. Pay a fair price and hold for the long term.
Apply those principles to the ASX and three names consistently rise to the top.
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Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA)
Buffett has long favoured dominant financial franchises with irreplaceable market positions.
In Australia, no bank comes closer to that description than Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
CBA holds a large part of Australia's home loans, and an even larger proportion of retail banking relationships. The bank also runs what is widely regarded as the most sophisticated technology platform in Australian banking.
Its CBA app has been ranked Australia's most used financial app for years, with more than 8 million active users. This gives it a consumer engagement moat that its peers have consistently failed to replicate.
In the first half of FY2026, CBA posted statutory net profit of $5.41 billion, up 5% year-on-year, alongside a fully franked interim dividend of $2.35 per share, up 4.4%.
CBA shares are not cheap, trading at approximately 26.5 times forward earnings.
But Buffett has always said he would rather buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
CBA has been a wonderful company for decades.
BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP)
Buffett is famously wary of commodity businesses, and rightly so.
But he has also invested in businesses with irreplaceable natural resource assets when the price is right and the management is outstanding.
BHP Group is the world's largest listed miner, with a portfolio of copper, iron ore, and potash assets that would take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to replicate.
What would attract Buffett today is the copper story specifically.
For the first time in the company's 136-year history, copper earnings exceeded iron ore contributions in the first half of FY2026.
This is being driven by global demand from AI data centres, electric vehicles, and grid infrastructure. Consequently, copper has reached record highs above US$13,000 per tonne.
BHP's management has deliberately been building copper exposure for years, allocating capital to Escondida, Olympic Dam, and Carrapateena.
Management has also been returning cash to shareholders through one of the most reliable fully franked dividend streams on the ASX.
Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG)
Buffett has always admired businesses that earn fee income on other people's capital.
That is precisely what Macquarie Group does.
Macquarie Asset Management now oversees $959.1 billion in funds under management.
This has made it one of the world's largest alternative asset managers specialised in infrastructure, real assets, and private credit.
The nature of Macquarie's fee-generating revenues produces stable, recurring earnings that smooth out the volatility of the commodities and markets divisions.
Macquarie posted a 30% lift in full-year NPAT to $4.85 billion in FY2026, delivering return on equity of 14% and lifting the full-year dividend to $7.00 per share.
What Buffett would particularly appreciate is the management track record.
Macquarie has compounded shareholder value at exceptional rates for more than three decades, adapting to new markets and opportunities while maintaining the capital discipline that defines truly great financial businesses.
Macquarie's management has built a reputation for adapting quickly to new opportunities while maintaining shareholder discipline, a trait Buffett has cited repeatedly as among the most important he looks for in any business.
Foolish takeaway
Buffett will almost certainly never buy CBA, BHP, or Macquarie.
He has a mandate to invest in the US and he has never shown interest in the ASX.
But for Australian investors who want to apply his principles to the stocks available to them, these three ASX shares embody everything he has spent six decades looking for: wide moats, exceptional management, and businesses that compound shareholder value year after year.
