Back in August, when discussing Buffett’s ongoing liquidation of his Bank of America stake, we said that “Berkshire’s rising cash stockpiles merely reflect the firm’s inability to find deals in today’s overvalued and weak economic environment”, little did we know just how accurate that would be, because just one day later we and the rest of the market were stunned to learn that far from only dumping Bank of America, the 94-year-old Omaha billionaire had been busy quietly liquidating his most iconic holding in an unprecedented selling spree that sent Berkshire’s cash pile soaring by a record $88 billion to an all time high $277 billion at the end of Q2.
That was just the beginning, however, and this morning we subsequently learned that through the end of Q3, Berkshire’s unprecedented cash build continued, and the world’s largest conglomerate added another $48 billion to its cash – through both “harvesting” (i.e., selling of existing holdings) and cash from operations, taking it to a record $325.2 billion, or nearly a quarter trillion in cash. As shown for context in the chart below, Berkshire has nearly doubled its cash holdings from $168 billion at the start of the year to a staggering $325 billion 9 months later, up 94%!
Finally, it’s not just AAPL that Buffett believes is overvalued and is aggressively dumping: the billionaire clearly believes the entire market is way expensive, and in the third quarter, Berkshire refused to repurchase any of its own shares, the first time it has done that since the company changed its buyback policy in 2018.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has sold over $3 billion in Amazon shares this week, according to a regulatory filing disclosed on Friday. This brings his total Amazon stock sales for 2024 to more than $13 billion. The latest sale comes as Amazon’s stock value nears $200 per share. This level was first reached in July, marking Amazon’s highest stock value since its debut on the NASDAQ in 1997.
In this recent sale, Bezos offloaded more than 16 million shares, taking advantage of Amazon’s strong third-quarter earnings report, which exceeded market expectations. This significant stock performance has bolstered Bezos’s wealth considerably. Currently, his net worth is estimated at $222 billion, securing him the second position on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Over the past year, his net worth has grown by $42.8 billion, primarily driven by Amazon’s positive market performance. Meanwhile, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk retains his position as the world’s richest person.
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