Berkshire is sitting pretty with over $300 billion of cash. Will Buffett invest a chunk of it?

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. No major company is better positioned than Berkshire Hathaway in the wake of the stock market rout. Berkshire was sitting on about $318 billion of cash and equivalents at year-end 2024, nearly double the total at the end of 2023.

A big question is whether CEO Warren Buffett will invest a chunk of that money in the stock market now that the S&P 500 has given up its gains since the election and is down 4% for the year. Many blue-chip stocks are down 15% or more from their 52-week highs, including most of the Magnificent Seven stocks that led the market in 2023 and 2024. Judging from Buffett’s behavior over the past few years, it may take more of a downdraft to get him to take a plunge.

The last time Berkshire aggressively bought stocks—including Occidental Petroleum—was in early 2022 when the S&P 500 was 20% below current levels. Buffett, 94, has been conservative on investing since 2020 and has built cash at Berkshire for most of the past five years. Berkshire was a net seller of $134 billion of stocks during 2024 and a net seller of $34 billion in 2023.

It was a net buyer of $34 billion in 2022, according to its 10-K reports for those years. Buffett sold two-thirds of Berkshire’s Apple stake—some 600 million shares—during 2024 at what Barron’s estimates was an average price of about $185 a share, appreciably below the current price of $227. Berkshire sold over 30% of its stake in Bank of America at an average price of about $41 last year, just above its closing price Monday of nearly $40.