Berkshire Hathaway's Giant Cash Pile Earns More When Rates Stay High. Here's Why That Matters.
Berkshire Hathaway is ready for a market downturn, but its safe pile of cash is increasingly a valuable asset in and of itself.
Overview
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA)(NYSE: BRKB) is widely followed for its investment approach, which includes buying companies outright and buying shares of publicly traded companies. However, holding cash is also an investment decision, and at the end of the first quarter of 2026, Berkshire Hathaway had nearly $400 billion in cash. It would be better if CEO Greg Abel could find attractive investment opportunities for that cash, but that cash isn't dead money anymore.
Former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett had a pretty simple concept around cash: If he couldn't find anything worth buying, he would hold cash. Buffett would rather wait than buy something just to buy something. Abel, his hand-picked successor, appears to have a similar mindset, noting that the cash balance rose in the single quarter that he was at the helm.
Image source: Getty Images.
Details
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.