-
Buffett called the current stock market sell-off “nothing” compared with prior crashes he’s navigated, noting that markets are only about 5% to 6% cheaper than recent highs.
-
He said he has no plans yet to employ Berkshire Hathaway’s $373-billion pile of cash and Treasury bills.
Like the rest of us, Warren Buffett has watched major stock indexes slide into a correction in recent weeks. Others have grown alarmed. His verdict: nothing much to see here—yet.
“Three times since I’ve taken over Berkshire, it’s gone down more than 50%,” Buffett told CNBC Tuesday. “This is nothing.” (U.S. stocks rallied Tuesday to wrap up a volatile quarter in which major indexes posted their biggest losses since 2022.)
The 95-year-old chair of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) stepped down as CEO at the start of this year after six decades in the role but is still involved in investment decisions. He said a modest pullback doesn’t change what Berkshire looks for: businesses worth owning indefinitely at prices that make sense.
“We aren’t in it to make 5% or 6%,”Buffett said Tuesday, suggesting Berkshire’s return expectations are more what the yield would be if the market returned to recent highs.
Berkshire held more than $373 billion in cash and Treasury bills at the end of 2025, and Buffett confirmed the company bought another $17 billion in T-bills at auction this week.
While having so much ready cash might make others itchy to make a move, Buffett said that pile isn’t going anywhere until he sees a real opportunity. “If there is a big decline” in the market, Buffett said, “we will deploy.”
That patience comes from Buffett’s well-known investing discipline. He’s waiting for prices low enough to justify long-term investing, just as he did decades ago with American Express (AXP) and Occidental Petroleum (OXY).
Buffett stayed away from suggestions that the market was in particular peril, but he did say too many investors don’t give investments enough time—a perennial problem.
Buffett also described a central tension between the stability of the U.S. economy and the human desire to gamble. “You have this incredible cathedral called the American Economic System,” he said. “But attached to it is a casino, and people are going to walk back and forth between the two.”
“If [investors] just buy a stock and sit for 50 years, if they got a group of them, they’re going to do fine,” he said. “The American capitalist system works and betting against the house does not.”
