Berkshire cash pile

Berkshire Hathaway ended 2025 with more money in cash and Treasury bills than in publicly traded stocks. (berkshirehathaway.com) Its annual report shows $38.0 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $295.98 billion in short-term U.S. Treasury bills at Dec. 31, 2025, for roughly $334 billion in highly liquid funds. The same filing listed $271.6 billion of equity securities. (sec.gov) Berkshire’s disclosed stock portfolio remained concentrated in a handful of companies. Its year-end 2025 Form 13F showed Apple at about $62.0 billion, American Express at $56.1 billion, Bank of America at $28.5 billion, Coca-Cola at $28.0 billion and Chevron at $19.8 billion. (sec.gov) The pile has been building for more than a year as Berkshire sold stocks faster than it bought them and kept collecting cash from its operating businesses. Berkshire reported $46 billion of net cash from operations in 2025, after more than $40 billion a year on average over the prior five years. (sec.gov) That stance fits a long-running Buffett rule: don’t swing unless the odds are clearly in your favor. In his 2024 shareholder letter, Buffett wrote that “there are no called strikes” in investing and said Berkshire can wait indefinitely for opportunities. (berkshirehathaway.com) The other reason the cash balance has become easier to defend is that Treasury bills now pay real income. Buffett said in the 2024 letter that Berkshire’s investment income rose as Treasury bill yields improved and the company “substantially increased” its holdings of those short-term securities. (berkshirehathaway.com) Berkshire is also not a typical fund that has to stay fully invested. Its insurance operations, railroad, utility business, manufacturers, retailers and service companies keep generating cash even when Buffett or Greg Abel decide prices in the stock market are too high. (berkshirehathaway.com) The counterargument is simple: holding that much liquidity can drag returns if markets keep rising. Berkshire’s own annual report says a large share of its equity portfolio is concentrated in a small number of American companies it expects to compound over decades, even as cash sits on the sidelines. (berkshirehathaway.com) For now, the balance sheet says Berkshire is still waiting. A company built on buying when others are forced to sell is carrying more than $330 billion in dry powder into 2026. (sec.gov)