Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire is sitting on a record 397 billion dollars in cash and Treasury bills, roughly 40 percent of its entire market value. That cash earns 4 to 5 percent while it waits, and gives Abel firepower to buy entire businesses or pile into stocks the moment the market cracks. Almost no other company has this kind of dry powder ready to deploy.

First quarter operating earnings jumped 17.7 percent year over year to 11.3 billion dollars, with insurance underwriting up 28.5 percent and BNSF railroad up 13.4 percent. The business runs on five completely different engines, insurance, railroads, energy, manufacturing, and the stock portfolio, so weakness in one area gets covered by strength in another.

That 397 billion dollar cash pile is also the biggest knock on the stock. Treasury bills pay 4 percent while the S&P 500 has ripped through three of its best years ever. Berkshire has lagged the index by more than 30 percentage points since Buffett announced his retirement, and insurance investment income just fell 7.4 percent as front-end yields started compressing.

Warren Buffett stepped down at the end of 2025 and Greg Abel is now running capital allocation. His first quarter was deliberately quiet. Buybacks restarted but came in at only 234 million dollars, basically symbolic against a trillion dollar balance sheet. Investors are still waiting to see whether Abel will deploy the cash boldly or just keep stockpiling it.