Warren Buffet now holds more than enough cash at Berkshire Hathaway, he could purchase the bottom 476 firms in the S&P 500. Presently, his cash pile is at $334 billion, with that pile being enough to swallow 95% of the index. The S&P 500, which covers about 80%of all US public equities by market values, tracks 500 of the country’s biggest firms. Buffet had previously called it the “Who’s Who of American business,” and has set his sights on it. But he is not purchasing it anymore, at least not for now.
Buffet did not warn investors last year before he started unloading stock, pulling out of his favorite firms, and walking away from the positions he has held for years. He went from buying to selling overnight, dumping shares of Apple, and reducing his stake in Bank of America. Buffet even shut down Berkshire’s exposure to Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF and SPDR’s S&P 500 ETF Trust, which had tracked the S&P 500 directly.
Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway are now rich enough to buy nations
It didn’t take long before the market caught up, because Nasdaq tanked and the S&P 500 started bleeding points in the weeks after Warren Buffet emptied his positions. The indexes were crushed, with millions wiped every week. To worsen the situation, President Donald Trump announced his global tariff plan, triggering fears about how higher costs would damage the company earnings, pressure consumers, and slam US growth.
Warren Buffet refused to do anything in return, especially at a time when people went hunting for the dip. This was because he had previously noted that he was not going to do anything unless the Federal Reserve acted first. This is exactly how it happened in 2020 during the COVID pandemic which led to the shutdown of the global economy. He had billions ready to be invested but refused to make a move until Jay Powell, the chairman of the Fed, stepped in. Powell dropped interest rates to zero and released stimulus on March 23, 2020, changing the game after that act.
“We could have deployed $50 or $75 billion, and right before the Fed acted,” Warren Buffet said at the 2021 meeting. “When Jay Powell acted as he did, that was incredibly important. He moved with a speed and a decisiveness on March 23rd that changed the situation where the economy had stopped.”
“We can’t buy companies as cheap as we can buy our own,” he said. “And we can’t buy stocks as cheap as we can buy our own.” That was the entire strategy—don’t overpay, and if nothing’s cheap, buy yourself. It was a repeat of the same playbook he’s using right now in 2025.
Warren Buffet has always mentioned that he doesn’t care what happens to the market tomorrow, his strategy doesn’t require him to take constant actions. “I never attempt to make money on the stock market,” he once said. “I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”