Ah, what does Buffett know? From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:
When the Oracle of Omaha gets dark-ish on stocks at these prices, he isn’t taken seriously, suddenly. It’s only when he hypes stocks that everyone jumps in behind him.
Treasury bills are now all the rage at Berkshire Hathaway. They have been earning between 5.0% and 5.5% since mid-2023, and Warren Buffett decided they’re a great deal, rather than stocks at current prices, and loaded up on them.
At the end of March, the huge conglomerate held $153 billion in T-bills, up by $24 billion from three months earlier, and up by nearly $50 billion from March 2023, and up by $86 billion from March 2022 ($67 billion), according to BRK’s 10-Q filings. The year 2022 was when T-bills began paying a noticeable interest once again.
If BRK earns an average of 5.3% on its T-bills in the current quarter, that would be about $2.4 billion in interest income with zero risk. By comparison, it reported $15.7 billion in total pre-tax income for Q1. So the income from T-bills matters.
Total T-bills, cash, and cash equivalent jumped to $189 billion, up by $21 billion in three months, and up by $59 billion year-over-year ($130 billion in Q1 2023).
