Berkshire Dumps 100 Million Apple Shares As Unprecedented Selling Spree Boosts Cash To Record $325 Billion Dollars
November 3rd, 2024Via: ZeroHedge:
Back in August, when discussing Buffett’s ongoing liquidation of his Bank of America stake, we said that “Berkshire’s rising cash stockpiles merely reflect the firm’s inability to find deals in today’s overvalued and weak economic environment”, little did we know just how accurate that would be, because just one day later we and the rest of the market were stunned to learn that far from only dumping Bank of America, the 94-year-old Omaha billionaire had been busy quietly liquidating his most iconic holding in an unprecedented selling spree that sent Berkshire’s cash pile soaring by a record $88 billion to an all time high $277 billion at the end of Q2.
That was just the beginning, however, and this morning we subsequently learned that through the end of Q3, Berkshire’s unprecedented cash build continued, and the world’s largest conglomerate added another $48 billion to its cash – through both “harvesting” (i.e., selling of existing holdings) and cash from operations, taking it to a record $325.2 billion, or nearly a quarter trillion in cash. As shown for context in the chart below, Berkshire has nearly doubled its cash holdings from $168 billion at the start of the year to a staggering $325 billion 9 months later, up 94%!
That means one third of Berkshire’s total value is in cash.
Paper dollars? Gold? Bitcoin? What kind of cash money does Berkshire hold?