QuestionerToday, Berkshire holds over $300 billion in cash and short-term investments representing about 27% of total assets, a historically high figure compared to the 13% average over the last 25 years. This has also led Berkshire to effectively own nearly 5% of the entire U.S. Treasury market. Beyond the need for liquidity to meet insurance obligations is the decision to raise cash primarily a de-risking strategy in response to high market valuations, or is it also a deliberate effort to position Berkshire's balance sheet for a smoother leadership transition, providing Greg Abel with maximum flexibility and a clean slate for future capital allocation decisions?
WarrenWell, I wouldn't do anything nearly so noble as to withhold investing myself just so that Greg could look good later on. Now, if he gets any edge of what I believe, I'll resent it. So the, you know, the amount of cash we have is, we would spend, well, when we came pretty close to spending $10 billion, not that long ago, for example. We'd spend $100 billion, I mean, and those decisions are not tough to me. make. When something is offered that is that makes sense to us and that we understand and offers good value and where we don't worry about losing. And the one problem with the investment business is that things don't come along in an orderly fashion, and they never will. So we're running a business which is very, very, very opportunity. And Charlie always thought I did too many things. He thought if we did about five things in our lifetime, we could, we'd end up doing better than if we did 50 and that we never concentrated enough. So that we would rather have, if we've got $335 billion now in treasuries, we would rather have conditions that have it developed where we would have like 50 billion or something like that. But that just isn't the way the business works. And we have made a lot of money by not wanting to be fully invested at all times. And every now and then you find something. And occasionally, very occasionally, but it'll happen again. I don't know when. It won't, it could be next week, it could be five years off, But it won't be 50 years off. You will have, we will be bombarded with offerings that, that we'll be glad we have the catch for. And it'd be a lot more fun of what would happen tomorrow, but it's very unlikely to happen tomorrow. Very, very unlikely to happen tomorrow. But it's not unlikely to happen in five years. And then it gets, probabilities get higher as you go along.