저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
버핏 버크셔 주주총회 Q&A 정리. 현금성 자산 약 3,480억달러로 사상 최고치이나 대규모 투자는 아직 없음. 최근 주가 조정은 소폭 조정이며 역사적으로 흔하다고 평가. 미국 재정적자와 이자비용 급증을 우려, 달러 신뢰 리스크 언급. 그레그 아벨이 차기 CEO로 발표되었고 버핏은 이사회 의장으로 남으며 주식 매도 의사 없음.
다듬은 글
The world makes big big big mistakes and surprises happen in dramatic ways. That's part of the stock market. That's Warren Buffett sitting and answering questions about the stock market for the first time in a year. And this year's 4 1/2 hour session was particularly important because of this. Nearly $350 billion in cash that Buffett has been hoarding aggressively in the last couple of years.
almost 30% of his company's assets sitting on the sidelines begging the question, what does he see coming? So, we're running a business which is very, very, very opportunistic. Tens of thousands of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, billionaires, and CEOs flocked to Omaha for the answer. I was also there making the grueling trip from Melbourne to Omaha for the fourth year in a row.
And I'm a little bit sick at the moment, which you can probably tell from my voice. But Buffett this year did not disappoint, revealing why he hasn't been buying stocks, his views on the recent market volatility, trade policy, and his concerns about the growing national debt burden, just to name a few.
before ending with an announcement that was so unexpected that even his second in command had no idea it was coming. The time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company. But let's first go back to that enormous and growing cash pile. Today, Berkshire holds over $300 billion in cash and short-term investments representing about 27% of total assets.
As of the latest filing, Buffett's company has $348 billion sitting on the sidelines, mostly in the form of US Treasury bills. This level marks yet another record high, increasing by $13 billion since the beginning of the year. But there is something different about this quarter. In the last couple of years, Buffett's cash pile has primarily been growing because he was actively selling some of his stocks, notably slashing his biggest investment in Apple.
But this quarter, his selling pretty much was all wrapped up with the cash pile rising primarily from the profits produced by his companies. Buffett hasn't made a major investment in a very long time, but there have been some deals that almost came to fruition. We came pretty close to spending 10 billion not that long ago, for example.
Barton just wrote in an addendum in the last 40 minutes or so wanting to know if you could talk more about that. I can give you a good answer to the second part, which is no. We will probably never get any further details on that potential deal, but it does show Buffett's willingness to deploy some of his cash if presented with a good offer.
We'd spend 100 billion. I mean, and and those decisions are not tough to make when something is offered that is that uh makes sense to us and that we understand offers good value and where we don't worry about losing. There just isn't a stock or a business that's big enough to be worth buying and can be bought at a low price.
You might have seen this graphic floating around social media. Buffett has enough cash to buy almost any company listed on the stock market. That is a fun way to get a grasp of just how much cash he has. But if he actually wanted to invest in one of these companies, it's not exactly easy. He'd most likely want to own less than 10% of it to avoid the additional reporting requirements.
And let's say he wanted to invest at least $50 billion so that the investment actually made some sort of impact. Then he'd be limited to potentially investing in companies with a value of more than $500 billion, of which there are currently 24. One of which is his own company and another which is already his biggest investment, which is to say that his choices are very limited in the public markets.
If we've got 335 billion now in treasuries, we would rather have conditions that are developed where we would have like 50 billion or something like that. But that that just isn't the way the business works. The one problem with the investment business is that things don't come along in an orderly fashion and they never will.
There are however very rare circumstances where the stock market offers investors lots and lots of cheap stocks and Buffett is more prepared than anyone on the planet for when the next time arises. Manor things get extraordinarily attractive very occasionally. The long-term trend is up, but it'll happen again.
It could be next week. It could be 5 years off, but it won't be 50 years off. Well, what if that time is already upon us? There's a big asterisk attached to the latest recording of Buffett's huge cash pile. This is the number as of the 31st of March. But shortly after Q1 ended, the stock market took a significant dive, correcting down almost 20% from its previous high.
If Buffett made any investments during this crash, it wouldn't appear until the next filing. So naturally, shareholders asked Buffett about this specifically at the meeting. as the recent market volatility presented Bergkshire with opportunities and just before we hear Buffett's response, I want to pause the video quickly to tell you about the sponsor of today's video, strawberry.me, a platform making personal coaching easier and more accessible than ever.
I've recently begun working with one of their certified coaches because honestly, I've been feeling a little bit stuck both personally and professionally. I often find myself bouncing between craving comfort and wanting to challenge myself more. And that's something that I found difficult to talk about with people.
What stood out to me about Strawberry.me is that they didn't just match me with someone to nod along, but rather a certified coach to help me work through tough decisions with practical tools, clear frameworks, and actual accountability. Different from therapy, where you might work through past experiences.
It's future focused coaching designed to help you take action. If you're navigating a career pivot, eyeing a leadership role, or just unsure about your next move, this kind of support can be a gamecher. Coaching has made me feel more grounded, and that clarity ripples out into better financial, personal, and professional choices.
The most important project you'll ever work on is you. So, if this resonates with you, then head to strawberry.me/hamishhot and get started with a $50 credit. What has happened in the last 45 days, 100 days, whatever is is is really nothing. There's been three times since we acquired Bergkshire that Bergkshire has gone down 50%.
This is not a huge move. Buffett was pretty quick to downplay the recent market volatility as anything more than a minor correction. And from a historical perspective, he is 100% right. periods where stocks fall 5 10 15% are extremely common. Benjamin Graham said it best nearly 100 years ago, describing the market as a voting machine in the short run and a weighing machine in the long run.
In any given year, investors are prone to over or underestimating the correct prices for businesses. But as time passes, these forecasts are corrected. The recent decline and now recovery is almost entirely the result of investors making predictions about the impact of US trade policy on the economy and company profits.
And while the price roller coaster might feel significant as it's happening, it'll likely be a tiny blip on the upward trajectory of the market when measured over years or decades. If it makes a difference to you whether your stocks are down 15% or not, you need to get a somewhat different investment philosophy because the world is not going to adapt to you.
You're going to have to adapt to the world. And I will say though, technically, he didn't actually answer the original question. Yes, it's probably implied in his response that he hasn't been buying anything. All of his comments suggest a much larger market event would be necessary for him to find a big enough deal.
But Buffett does have a history of being intentionally ambiguous when it comes to trades that he's still in the process of making. When asked about selling Apple stock at last year's meeting, he said this. I would say that at the end of the year, I would think it extremely likely that that uh Apple is the largest common stock holding we have.
And in the following two quarters, he cut the stake by $75 billion. Of course, he didn't actually lie. Apple was still Burkshire's biggest stake, but he did leave out the part where he was planning on cutting it in half, which is just to say that we'll have to wait for the next quarterly filing to see for sure if he's made any recent moves.
Fiscal policy is what scares me in the United States because it's made the way it is. And uh all the motivations are to doing a lot of things that can cause trouble with with money. But that's not Buffett always stands firm on the idea that it's impossible for anyone to predict when a stock market crash will happen.
But we can look at what's happening across the economy and see where the risks are rising. And for Buffett, a big concern is America's fiscal policy. The US national deficit has been trending upwards for years now with government spending $1.83 trillion more than they collected in revenue in the fiscal year 2024.
much less of course than the excessive spending during the pandemic years, but it's still expanding and is projected to reach $1.9 trillion in the current fiscal year. We're operating at a fiscal deficit now that is unsustainable. The Wall Street Journal recently put together some great visualizations of the deficit, and this one that breaks down the spending categories really illustrates the problem.
Social Security has been the biggest per capita expenditure for years and it's increasing but at a fairly predictable rate and obviously there was a shakeup of the categories during the co years due to stimulus checks and other emergency spending. But the biggest outlier on this chart is the spending on interest payments.
Since 2021, it shot up to become the third largest category in fiscal year 2024. And so far in this fiscal year, it's now the second largest category. Every year that the US runs a deficit, they need to borrow more money to cover the gap. This has been going on for decades, but it was somewhat hidden because interest rates were so low for so long.
But now that rates are back up to a more normal level, the cost of that debt each year is skyrocketing. We are doing something because it's unsustainable and it has the aspect to it that it gets uncontrollable to a certain point. I mean, essentially, you just give up on it. We don't know where the point of no return is, but it's clear to Buffett that the strategy needs to change or there could be big problems for the US dollar.
And obviously, we wouldn't want to be owning anything that we thought was in a currency that was really going to hell. And that's the big thing we worry about with the United States currency. The path for the US to stabilize its debt problem seems so simple on the surface. The US deficit is currently about 6.5% of GDP.
the total economic output of the country. Some economists like Ray Dalio say this needs to come down to about 3% of GDP. In this case, the government would still be running a deficit and therefore needing to borrow more money every single year. But at that rate, some economists like Ray Dalio believe that there would be plenty of lenders to meet the government's borrowing demand.
In practice, that's a tall order. Trying to increase revenue or decrease spending by a total of a trillion dollars a year. Both higher taxes and cutting social programs are deeply unpopular and therefore hard for politicians to campaign for. Plus, there will be other negative effects to consider in the economy when making sharp changes to either side of the equation.
But by far the biggest surprise of the entire 4 and a half hour Q&A session was the statement Warren Buffett made in the last 5 minutes. The time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at your end. Yep, that's right. After 60 years of controlling and running Bergkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett will be stepping down from his role by the end of the year.
An announcement that came as a shock to nearly every person in the stadium and watching around the world, including, by the way, Greg Ael. Abel is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway's energy business. And while he's long been known as the man who will replace Buffett, even he was unaware of this news beforehand.
Andre doesn't know anything about this until what he's hearing right now. But that uh well actually there was one person who knew my Uber driver. I was taking an Uber with Brandon from New Money and Nate O'Brien a couple of days before the meeting and the Uber driver goes, "Yeah, Buffett's going to announce his retirement." Uh which we all of course laughed at.
Uh but what wasn't funny was uh if I had placed a put option bet on Burkshire Hathaway stock uh I would have made about a,000% when the market opened on Monday. So um I guess you can't win them all. I have no intention zero of selling one share of Bergkshire Hathaway. Buffett was quick to reassure shareholders that he won't be selling a single share of stock and that he's still going to be involved at Berkshire in some capacity.
When the board voted on the decision the next day, they indicated that Buffett will remain as chairman, which in my interpretation means if there ever comes an opportunity for Berkshire to deploy some of their $350 billion cash pile, Buffett probably will still be very involved in those deals. Warren received a huge standing ovation from a stadium of 40,000 people.
many who have been coming to Omaha for years or decades to listen to the investing and life wisdoms of the greatest investor ever. And I will certainly be going back in 2026 for my fifth year. Subscribe if you haven't already. And thanks for watching.
Comments 0