Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK) Chair Warren Buffet said it is not an “ideal surrounding area or environment” to deploy capital.
During an interview with CNBC on the sidelines of the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting on Saturday, Buffett said the conglomerate “can pick our spots” but that despite having nearly $380 billion in cash, “sometimes we’re doing nothing, other times we’ve got quite active.”
Buffett said that in the 60 years he’s been an investor, only five have been “really juicy” in terms of opportunities. When there aren’t bargains to be had, Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway are fine doing nothing, which is why its cash pile has swelled to a record high.
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The meeting marked the first time in 60 years that Buffett was in the audience instead of on stage. At last year’s meeting the “Oracle of Nebraska” announced he would step down as CEO at the end of 2025.
Buffett said part of the reason Berkshire is hesitant to deploy capital is because of high prices in the market. He said a good time to buy will be when “nobody else will answer their phones.”
Investors Are In A Gambling Mood
Buffett, who is known for his values-based approach to investing, also took issue with the gambling nature of investing, comparing the markets to a church with a casino attached to it.
“People can move between the church and the casino, and I would say there are more people in the church than more people in the casino, but the casino has gotten very attractive,” Buffett told CNBC. “If you’re buying one day options or selling them, that is not investing, it’s not speculating, it’s gambling. We’ve never had people in a more gambling mood than now. It doesn’t mean investing is terrible. It does mean prices for an awful lot of things look very silly.”
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One Day Options Gone Crazy
Buffett pointed to the case of a U.S. soldier who is charged with using classified information to make a $400,000 bet on the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro on Polymarket, a prediction market.
“There’s nobody who can explain why they’re buying an option for one day unless maybe the fellow that made the $400-and-some-thousand from knowing when we were going into Venezuela,” Buffett told CNBC. “The quantity of those things is just incredible.”
What Buffett’s Cash Position Says About Today’s Market Environment
Warren Buffett’s decision to hold record levels of cash highlights how even the most experienced investors are struggling to find attractive opportunities in today’s market. For individual investors, that uncertainty often raises a more practical question—how to evaluate opportunities when conditions feel unclear.
Platforms like Public offer tools designed to address that directly through its “Generated Assets” feature, where investors can type in a market thesis and have AI scan US stocks, evaluate candidates, and build a custom index around that …
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