A recent Business Insider (BI) heading warned boldly: “Why Warren Buffett’s record-breaking cash stockpile should have investors very worried.”
The BI’s evidence comes in the form of a record stash of over $130 billion of idling cash combined with major indices, like the S&P 500 (SPY), at or near all-time highs. Putting the two observations together, Business Insider concluded that the market must be “overvalued and overly expensive.”
The logic is deceptively simple. If the market were cheap, Buffett would draw down on all that cash and buy the bargains. Since he is instead letting the cash pile ever higher, he must think assets are too expensive to buy. BI even references Buffett’s last annual report where the Oracle of Omaha complained that high prices prevented most deal-making in 2017. The S&P 500 gained 19% in 2017 while Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) out-performed with a 22% return. Not bad for a year devoid of deals.
Most importantly, the article includes a chart showing the amount of cash on-hand at Buffett’s Berkshire for each quarter since 1996 alongside a line graph of the S&P 500 (SPY). The chart visually demonstrates the correlation between Buffet’s cash and the stock market. Like the stock market, the stash of cash has risen impressively since the last trough in 2009 during the recession. Starting in 2011 and 2012 and then consistently from 2014 until now, Berkshire’s cash stash hit all-time highs. Despite these on-going string of all-time highs, the S&P 500 refused to top out. The jury is still out on January’s all-time high which the index almost matched this month. Still, the rationale linking 2018’s all-time highs to the imminence of the ultimate calamity is not as clear as the article implies:
“As you can see, Buffett held comparatively high levels of cash in the periods preceding the two most recent market crashes, in 1999 and 2007.”
