{"id":42109,"date":"2025-08-04T00:52:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T00:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/42109\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T00:52:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T00:52:15","slug":"warren-buffetts-berkshire-hathaway-sold-stocks-and-didnt-snap-up-bargains-even-as-markets-crumbled-after-liberation-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/42109\/","title":{"rendered":"Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sold stocks and didn’t snap up bargains even as markets crumbled after ‘Liberation Day’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warren Buffett\u2019s Berkshire Hathaway<\/a> largely remained on the sidelines last quarter, even as the stock market cratered on President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs and briefly presented steep bargains.<\/p>\n

Second-quarter results released on Saturday revealed that the conglomerate was a net seller of stocks for the 11th straight quarter. Berkshire offloaded $6.92 billion during the quarter and bought $3.9 billion.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Buffett\u2019s cash pile kept getting bigger, hitting a fresh high of $344 billion at the end of June, up from $333 billion at the end of March. Berkshire also refrained from stock repurchases for the fourth consecutive quarter.<\/p>\n

The legendary value-conscious investor has bemoaned the lack of good deals for years now. That includes possibilities for large acquisitions of companies that could be folded into Berkshire as well as major stock purchases for the portfolio.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Buffett has also avoided knee-jerk moves, and the stock market saw a head-spinning plunge and rebound in April as Trump shocked Wall Street with his aggressive tariffs then put them on hold just days later.<\/p>\n

During the selloff, the S&P 500 flirted with bear market territory, diving nearly 20% from its prior high. But the index has since shot back up to fresh records.<\/p>\n

Still, the swoon also highlighted Buffett\u2019s uncanny timing, as he\u00a0appeared to anticipate a market downturn<\/a>\u00a0last year by selling $134 billion in equities in 2024\u2014when the bull market was still raging.<\/p>\n

The stock market swings also came as Buffett was contemplating a transition away from his leadership role. In May, he announced that his anointed successor,\u00a0Greg Abel,\u00a0should take over as Berkshire Hathaway CEO<\/a> by the of the year. <\/p>\n

While Buffett is expected to stay on as chairman, he may be staying away from dramatic moves to clear the decks for Abel, who had already been taking on a\u00a0bigger leadership role<\/a> before May.<\/p>\n

Despite his aversion for major purchases lately, Buffett\u2019s annual letter to shareholders in February reaffirmed his commitment to staying invested in stocks and companies, even as cash continued to mount.<\/p>\n

\u201cBerkshire shareholders can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities\u2014mostly American equities although many of these will have international operations of significance,\u201d he wrote. \u201cBerkshire will\u00a0never\u00a0prefer ownership of cash-equivalent assets over the ownership of good businesses, whether controlled or only partially owned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berkshire also reported that its operating earnings, which exclude the impact of its investments, fell 4% to $11.16 billion in the second quarter as insurance-underwriting results weakened. The company booked a $3.8 billion impairment on its Kraft Heinz<\/a> stake as well, marking down its value to $8.4 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warren Buffett\u2019s Berkshire Hathaway largely remained on the sidelines last quarter, even as the stock market cratered on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[24155,84,12055,467,56,54,55,5465],"class_list":{"0":"post-42109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-berkshire-hathaway","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-earnings","11":"tag-markets","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom","15":"tag-warren-buffett"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}