Warren Buffett sits on $325 billion in cash. Won't deploy it. Calls everyone else a gambler.
The man runs Berkshire Hathaway like a savings account your grandmother opened in 1957. He's been selling stocks for two years straight. Dumped half his Apple position. Trimmed Bank of America. Built a cash pile so large it could buy Netflix, Costco, and still have enough left over for a controlling stake in Toyota. But sure, it's the retail traders with their $3,000 Robinhood accounts who are ruining price discovery.
Buffett says the market's too expensive. Can't find value. Everything's overpriced. This from a guy whose company trades at 1.6 times book value while doing nothing with the money. He's essentially running the world's most expensive money market fund and charging you a conglomerate discount for the privilege.
The gambling comment is rich. Berkshire's annual meeting is a pilgrimage site where 40,000 people fly to Omaha to watch a 95-year-old man eat See's Candies and explain why he won't buy anything. It's a casino where the house always folds.
Here's what actually happened: Buffett made a career buying cheap stocks in a market where information moved at the speed of a fax machine. Now every dipshit with a smartphone can read a 10-K in thirty seconds and pull up a comp table before their coffee gets cold. The edge disappeared. So did his deal flow.
But blaming speculation is easier than admitting you're holding cash because you're old and terrified of losing money in your final act. The Oracle of Omaha has become the Coward of Omaha, and his last great investment thesis is complaining that nobody else is buying what he refuses to.
Photo by Paul White on Unsplash
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