Why Warren Buffet is Holding a Record Amount of Cash

Oren Buffett has just sold over $75 billion worth of his stock Holdings including big chunks of one of his biggest Holdings Apple the legendary investor is currently sitting on the largest pile of cash that he's ever had Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett's holding company currently has 277 billion dollars worth of cash now while we've seen his cash pile grow steadily throughout 2023 and 2024 the most recent report shows a substantially larger accumulation of cash to anything that we've seen in the last 30 years of data his cash position jumped from $189 billion to we're going to

analyze in this video whether there is any truth to this understanding exactly what this record cash allocation means about Warren Buffett's outlook on the economy and financial markets at first glance Warren Buffett also had a large cast position throughout 2007 which was the year right before the global financial crisis occurred a moment where the US Stock Market dropped by 60% as a result of a severe recession Buffett then proceeded to deploy his cash reserves into new Investments when stocks were trading at a discount in 2009 and 2010 this really makes it seem like Buffett knew

something something that others didn't again in late 2021 Warren Buffett's cash allocation was at all-time highs right before the stock market topped and began a 20% decline again an opportunity that he used to deploy his cash reserves into new Investments but this chart of Berkshire Hathway's total cash allocation is a little bit misleading we can't just look at his total cash pile we have to look at the size of Warren Buffett's cash allocation relative to the size of his total Investments because the size of Burkshire Hathway's total portfolio isn't the same today as it was

in the 1990s so it's only normal that their cash pile has gotten bigger as Burkshire hathway has also grown over time that doesn't necessarily mean that they have a very high cash allocation so let's dig into that this chart shows us Berkshire Hathway's cash allocation as a percentage of total assets and indeed we can see that Warren Buffett has increased his cash allocation over the last year significantly relative to his total assets we can definitely say that Warren Buffett has never had this high of a cash allocation that being said we can see that the

last time his cash allocation was around these levels was actually in January of 2006 that was almost two whole years before the global financial crisis occurred and between January of 2006 and the onset of the Great Recession Warren Buffett's cash allocation was actually declining as a percentage of his total assets so that means that Warren Buffett was increasing his stock allocation in the two years before the global financial crisis occurred that doesn't make it seem like Warren Buffett was somehow aware of an underlying problem in the banking system or that he had any inside information

regarding a potential market crash if Warren Buffett had known about the global financial crisis ahead of time this chart would look more like this another observation we can make is that Warren Buffett had a very low amount of cash in the year 2000 this was right before the US Stock Market experienced a 50% correction as a result of the 2001 recession again if Warren Buffett had known in advance about an economic recession in 2001 his cash allocation would have been a lot higher now Warren Buffett has never pretended that he was able to time markets

he's said before multiple times that he never made an investment decision based on an economic prediction he's even gone as far as saying that any firm that hires an economist has one employee too many so so Warren Buffett is not ramping up his cash allocation today because he knows about some kind of coming economic disaster he is allocating more cash because he doesn't see any attractive investment opportunities in today's stock market or in other words because he believes stocks today are too expensive indeed one of his favorite valuation indicators is currently at the highest level

since 1947 this is an indicator commonly known as the buffet indicator because Warren Buffett has previously said that this is a simple way to gauge how expensive the stock market is it is the price of the stock market divided by the GDP of the United States so basically giving a measure of how expensive the stock market is relative to the size of the actual underlying economy and today the buffet indicator shows us that the market is about as expensive as it's ever been which gives a more difficult environment for investors like Warren Buffett to find

Opportunities that's because Warren Buffett is a value investor his investment philosophy can be summed up with this phrase buy great businesses at cheap prices an investment philosophy that was developed by Warren Buffett's Mentor Benjamin Graham in the book The intelligent investor in this book Graham explains that over time the stock market will fluctuate from being too expensive as a result of investors being too greedy to being too cheap as a result of fear he highlights that the intelligent investor can take advantage of a cheap Market to get bargain prices for buying great companies and that

when the market is at more expensive levels the intelligent investor should aim to have a higher allocation to cash and wait for better buying opportunities especially if the yield that you get from holding cash is higher than the one that you get for holding the stock market today the yield on cash stands at around 5% a result of the central banks raising interest rates while the S&P 500's earnings yield today stands at around 3.6% in Graham's book he argues that this is the type of environment where the intelligent investor should aim to have a higher

cash allocation to achieve good long-term returns but as we discussed throughout this video we cannot conclude that this type of strategy can anticipate the next big move on the stock market ahead of time