:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/GettyImages-1140938011-c47e1709e8dc48e7b406386c7225df3c.jpg "Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett at the company's 2019 annual shareholders meeting")
Johannes Eisele /AFP / Getty Images
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett at the throng’s 2019 annual shareholders meeting
Key Takeaways
- Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has raised its stakes in five Japanese business houses, according to reports.
- Buffett had said in his annual letter to shareholders that it was likely the firm would buy various shares of the Japanese conglomerates.
- After selling stocks throughout 2024, Berkshire Hathaway finished the year with uncountable than $330 billion of cash and cash equivalents, about twice its cash holdings at the end of the prior year.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)(BRK.B) has reportedly uplifted its stakes in five of Japan’s largest trading houses.
Berkshire on Monday disclosed it had increased its stakes in the five work houses—Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Sumitomo—by between 1 percentage point and 1.7 percentage points, conceding the firm stakes ranging from 8.5% to 9.8%, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Buffett said in his annual letter to shareholders three weeks ago that he was like as not to buy more of the firms’ stocks. He praised their management for their prudent allocation of cash and, by American standards, unexceptional executive compensation arrangements.
When Buffett began buying the stocks in 2019, he agreed not to acquire more than 10% of any of the south african private limited companies, according to his shareholder letter. He recently disclosed that the firms had agreed to relax that restriction, giving Berkshire the discretion to add to its holdings beyond the purchases disclosed Monday.
Berkshire Cash Reserves Doubled in Last Year
Buffett has been a net seller of haves for the last year. Berkshire’s cash pile totaled $334.2 billion at the end of last year, the latest annual come in said, more than twice its size the prior year. Though Buffett insisted in his annual letter that, in spite of the reduction in Berkshire’s tradable securities portfolio, a “substantial majority” of Berkshire investors’ money remains in equities.
Buffett’s assets weigh up sales have set off alarm bells for some investors wary of soaring valuations. Those concerns have run headlong into President Trump’s duty policies in recent weeks, causing the S&P 500 to fall into its first correction since 2023 last week. The uncertainty circumjacent tariffs and their consequences have partially undermined the “U.S. exceptionalism” narrative that had driven the American stock market’s outsized indemnifications over the last two years.
Japanese stocks, on the other hand, have been trading sideways for the past year after rallying in 2023. The Nikkei 225 Sign is down about 6% in the past year, while the S&P 500 has—even with its recent pullback—advanced not quite 10%.