저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
버핏의 현금 보유는 시장 타이밍이 아니라 투자할 만한 기업을 찾지 못한 결과라는 주장 현금 1440억 달러 중 1200억 달러는 1년 미만 만기 미국 단기국채에 있고, 버핏·멍거는 최소 300억 달러 현금을 유지하겠다고 밝힘 멍거는 Daily Journal 주주총회에서 현금을 들고 기다리는 것이 아니라 투자할 대상이 없어서 현금이 쌓인 것이라고 설명 버핏은 2020~2021년 2년간 자사주 매입에 517억 달러를 써서 발행주식의 9%를 소각했고, 이로 인해 남은 주주의 지분율이 약 10% 상승함 버핏의 4대 원칙(사업 이해, 해자, 우수 경영진, 내재가치 대비 충분한 할인가 매수)을 충족하는 대형 우량주가 현재 거의 없어 현금이 늘어나는 구조라는 해석 장기 관점에서 강세장에 현금이 많고 약세장에 적은 것은 합리적이며, 버핏의 현금 축적을 하락 위험 신호로 볼 필요는 없다는 결론
다듬은 글
How many times on the channel have I regarded Warren Buffett as the best stock market investor to have ever lived? I've said that a lot, and he is. He took over Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, and since that time his regime of acquisitions and investments has led to a 20.1% return every year for Berkshire shareholders versus the S&P 500's 10.5% but doesn't it seem a little bit strange that the world's best stock picker has $144 billion worth of cash sitting on the sidelines, literally doing next to nothing as it sits in either short-term Treasury bonds or in a bank account?
I mean, for context, that sum of cash is almost equal to his position in Apple, which is the biggest investment in his portfolio, valued at $161 billion at the start of the year. And with ultra-low interest rates naturally, you know, inflating the market between 75 and 80% in the last 5 years, this has led many value investors to wonder, "Warren, why do you hold so much cash?
Do you think a crash is imminent? Are you trying to time the market? Or more worryingly, have you lost your touch?" Well, over the past month or so, we've got some really interesting new information from both Buffett and his long-time business partner Charlie Munger as to exactly why the Oracle of Omaha has been stashing his cash, and also Warren Buffett's $52 billion workaround that has largely gone unnoticed.
So, with that said, let's roll the intro and discuss. This video is brought to you by Sharesight. Sick of tracking your performance manually? Track capital gains, dividends, and currency fluctuations easily, and when it comes to tax time, have everything you need ready to go with just a click of a button.
Try Sharesight for free, or use the referral link in the description to get 4 months free when you sign up to an annual plan. So, I've seen a lot of comments around the internet lately of people saying things like, "What? I'm staying in cash right now because look, even Warren Buffett doesn't want to buy stocks in this environment.
His cash pile is just growing and growing and growing." And after having really delved into the weeds of Warren Buffett's investing situation, this actually isn't the correct takeaway from his current cash position. To cut to the chase, Warren Buffett is not trying to time the market. He's not trying to avoid the stock market right now.
It's just that he is really struggling to find investments that he can put considerable amounts of money towards. We first got an inkling of this being the case a few weeks back when Buffett's long-time business partner Charlie Munger said this at the Daily Journal Shareholder Meeting. What are your thoughts on going to cash today and waiting for better opportunities to deploy that cash over the next 12 months?
Is it a sensible idea in your mind? My whole adult life I've never heard of cash waiting for better conditions. I've just invested in the best thing I guess I could find and I don't think I'm going to change now. And the Daily Journal's used up its cash. Now Berkshire has excess cash. Quite a bit of excess cash.
But it's not doing that because it thinks it knows how to time investments. It It just can't find anything it can stand buying. And of course when he says Berkshire, he really means Buffett. That was the first bit of evidence explaining why Buffett's cash pile was so big into 2022. But then just last week we got Warren Buffett's annual letter to Berkshire shareholders and this year he actually took the time to explicitly discuss the enormity of Berkshire Hathaway's cash pile and why it is like this.
So bear with me here, but I want to read you exactly what Warren Buffett has said about this issue. He said, "Berkshire's balance sheet includes 144 billion of cash and cash equivalents excluding the holdings of the railroad and energy businesses. Of this sum, 120 billion is held in US Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year.
That stake leaves Berkshire financing about half of 1% of all the publicly held national debt. Also, side note, how crazy is that? Warren Buffett or Berkshire Hathaway is literally financing like 0.5% of all national debt of the United States. That is pretty crazy. Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire will always hold more than 30 billion of cash and cash equivalents.
We want our company to be financially impregnable and never depend on the kindness of strangers or even that of friends. Both of us like to sleep soundly and we want our creditors, insurance claimants, and you to do so as well. So, essentially, 30 billion of that, you know, 144 billion cash pile is completely untouchable, but hey, that that still leaves 114 billion dollars.
So, what's up with that? Buffett goes on and says, "The 144 billion, that imposing sum I show you is not some deranged expression of patriotism, nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago on March the 11th, 1942, when I purchased three shares of City Services preferred stock.
Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream at you, 'Never bet against America.' After that initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favorite status throughout that period was 100% and it still is.
Berkshire's current 80% or so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof, that is, marketable stocks, which meet our criteria for long-term holding. Charlie and I have enjoyed such cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant.
They are also never permanent. And fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on. And we'll get to that in a second, but they have it straight from the horse's mouth. Warren Buffett is really struggling to find companies to invest in at this moment in time.
And oh, aha, he's lost his touch. He's not the investor he used to be. I knew it. Well, that's not entirely fair, either. You see, Buffett is in a really tricky position because we know his four-pillar approach. Understand the business, ensure it has a moat, ensure the management is top quality, and then buy the shares well below their intrinsic value.
Well, at the moment, there's practically no high-quality companies in Warren's circle of competence that are firstly large enough to attract an investment from Berkshire, and then B, trading at a margin of safety price. And we all know that Warren is not someone to start, you know, violating his proven four-pillar approach just to try and get a little bit more money into the market now when valuations are just ridiculous.
So, what does this mean? It means that naturally, the cash pile continues to build up. But as a long-term investor, ask yourself this. Does that really matter? I mean, if you zoom out and you look at a 20- to 30-year time period, if you were going to simply buy low and sell high, doesn't it make logical sense that during the highest of high bull markets, we naturally have more cash on hand?
And then at the lowest of low markets, as opportunities are plentiful, we have less cash. To me, the more you look at it from a long-term perspective, the more obvious Buffett's cash pile looks. It's not a function of trying to time the market. It's just a function of following that rational long-term strategy while being in a very high market.
But no doubt, it's still a pain in the right? We are investors, and we want to be invested. These kind of market conditions are awfully painful to sit through. Well, luckily for Buffett, over the past year or so, he has been able to deploy some of that cash into the market in actually a very large way.
And I call it Buffett's invisible investment because if you look at a 13F filing, you won't see it anywhere. But in fact, this investment has now grown to 51.7 billion dollars over the past 2 years. And it is of course share repurchases. So, on this Buffett says, "There are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment.
The first is always front and center of our minds, increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire's controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire's resources.
Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today though, we find little that excites us." And of course, that's what we were just talking about before.
"That's largely because of a truism, long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upwards, whether those are stocks or apartments or farms, oil wells, or whatever. Then our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses that Berkshire owns.
And when the price-value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire owners. During the past 2 years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at year-end 2019 for a total cost of 51.7 billion.
That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether it's the wholly owned businesses such as BNSF or GEICO or the partly owned businesses such as Coca-Cola and Moody's. So, if you own Berkshire Hathaway 2 years ago, then over time as Buffett uses up Berkshire's cash to buy back Berkshire shares and delete them or or clear them off the table, your percentage ownership of the business goes up.
You know, the pizza is still the same size, but now it's divided up into less slices, but the amount of slices that you hold hasn't changed, meaning that your slices are now more valuable. They account for a higher percentage of whatever pizza's left in front of you. So, essentially, if you owned 10% of Berkshire 2 years ago, now you own 11% and you've had to do absolutely nothing for it.
So, overall, they are the reasons behind Berkshire's huge cash pile and also the sneaky way that Buffett has still been able to put some of that money to use. So, summary is no, he's definitely not timing the market. He's just got limited businesses to invest in that will actually move the needle for Berkshire.
And right now, out of those businesses, none of them meet all four of his investment criteria, meaning naturally, you know, the cash pile grows. But, uh better that I reckon than making uh mediocre investments, mediocre deals in a very speculative market. But, anyway guys, that will just about wrap things up.
Thanks very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of the video. Of course, leave a like on it if you did enjoy or if you found it useful. Subscribe to the channel if you're new around here. Check out ProfitFull, that's my business, link down in the description below if you're interested in learning the full Warren Buffett approach.
New Money Clips, New Money Patreon, link down in the description below. Thanks very much to the Patreon producers for helping to fund this channel. Very much appreciated. And with that said, guys, I'm out of here. I'll see you all in the next video. All right, cash Buffett. Let's go. Yeah, cash Buffett. Uh
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