Greg Abel’s first quarterly report as Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA)(NYSE: BRKB) CEO came with a number that’s hard to look past. The conglomerate ended the first quarter of 2026 with a record $397 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term Treasury bills — up from around $373 billion at the end of 2025, and equal to more than a third of the company’s market value.
A pile that size invites a dramatic reading: that Warren Buffett and Abel are bracing for a crash. But that may read too much into it. The cash is less a market call than the result of a simpler problem. At today’s prices, Berkshire continues to struggle to find much worth buying.
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How the cash got so big
The balance didn’t swell in a single quarter. Berkshire has been a net seller of stocks for more than a dozen quarters in a row, parting with well over $150 billion more in equities than it has bought since late 2022.
In the first quarter of 2026 specifically, Berkshire sold about $8 billion more stock than it purchased. Money that leaves the equity portfolio and isn’t put into a new investment generally lands in Treasury bills, where it earns a decent yield while it waits.
Buffett, who handed the CEO role to Abel at the start of 2026 but stayed on as chairman and still advises him, has been candid about what he sees in the market.
“We’ve never had people in a more gambling mood than now,” he said at Berkshire’s annual meeting in May, pointing to investors paying up for stocks and piling into short-term options and prediction markets.
That helps explain the cash. The S&P 500 has gained about 7% in 2026 and is trading near record highs, while Berkshire has mostly stood aside.
What it would take to put it to work
Abel, however, hasn’t sat still. In late May, Berkshire agreed to buy homebuilder Taylor Morrison for about $8.5 billion including debt, working out to $72.50 a share, for the country’s sixth-largest homebuilder.
It’s Abel’s first major acquisition, and a familiar Berkshire move: paying cash for an out-of-favor, cyclical business. But $8.5 billion is a small fraction of a $397 billion cash position. A deal that size barely moves it.
Berkshire has also recently agreed to invest an additional $10 billion in Alphabet as part of the tech giant’s $80 billion capital raise. This is a more meaningful amount, but still not enough to move the needle for a nearly $1.1 trillion company in a big way.
