➡ Warren Buffett, a renowned long-term investor, is selling off his bank stocks, including Bank of America, and a significant portion of his Apple shares. This has resulted in him amassing a record-breaking $325 billion in cash, more than he’s ever held before. While this might seem like a warning sign of a potential market crash, it’s important to understand the nuances behind his actions. Buffett’s moves could be a response to various factors such as inflation, interest rate changes, global instability, or US debt levels.
➡ Banks are buying bonds not because they want to, but because they have to, which could lead to poor performance and some banks going out of business. Warren Buffett is selling bank stocks and some Apple stocks, possibly due to potential tax increases. Despite having a large cash position, Buffett is waiting for the next big opportunity while earning $16 billion a year from U.S. treasuries. It’s suggested that individual investors focus on high growth areas like tech stocks and commodities, rather than bank stocks.

Warren Buffett is dumping his bank stocks and he’s stacking a record-breaking $325 billion in cash. It’s the largest cash reserve that he’s ever held. So what are his moves telling us? Now here’s the thing. Buffett is the ultimate long-term investor and he’s pulling out of major bank stocks including Bank of America. He sold off a huge chunk of Apple too and now he’s got more cash than stocks in his portfolio. It’s a level of caution we haven’t seen from him in decades. So does he know something that we don’t? Are these moves a signal that a massive market crash is looming? Well in this video we’re going to break down Buffett’s recent actions.

What they mean for the stock market and whether this record crash pile is the ultimate warning sign. But here’s the twist. While his moves might look like a red flag there’s more to the story than meets the eye. So let’s dig into what’s really going on and what this means for us. Now real quick my name is Mark Moss. I’ve been a tech focused VC investor for over a decade. I’m a partner at a leading tech VC hedge fund. I coach business owners on investing and I’m sharing some of the same data that we use to make long-term decisions.

So let’s go. All right so Warren Buffett record amounts of cash. $325 billion of cash dumping stocks. What is going on? Now when an investor like Warren Buffett one of the most famous most successful investors in history is making moves like this. We need to be paying attention and there’s no shortage of headlines all across YouTube and social media talking about this. But the problem for me is that they’re trying to get your fear up. They’re trying to get a lot of clicks but they lack the nuance of what’s really going on.

You know in my videos I like to bring you the date of the facts or what I call the receipts. And just like I like to show you charts because I want to see the size and the speed of a move. I want to show you the data under the hood so we can understand is it time to panic like most of media wants to tell you. Or is there something else going on that we can learn from Buffett and apply to our own portfolio. So the first thing is he’s dumping what.

So we know that he has a record amount of cash. $325 billion. But what is he selling to get that cash. That’s an important piece. And then what’s he gonna do with the cash. Well the first thing is it’s not just any stocks that he’s selling. It’s not just trimming 10 percent across the board or something like that. He’s selling strategic stocks specifically what is he selling. He’s selling bank stocks. This is a big one. Bank of America. We can see that he’s dumping at a record of rate. One of his main holdings Berkshire Hathaway unloaded more Bank of America stock this week.

So he’s been selling continuously more bad news more selling more bad news more selling. So it’s not just a one time thing. It’s continuing over and over. As a matter of fact says here it sold about two hundred and thirty eight point seven million. It’s a lot two thirty point seven million shares or about twenty three percent of its holdings since mid-July. So it’s not just a one time thing. It’s getting worse and worse and worse. Dumping bank stocks specifically. We’re going to come back to why bank stops. What else. He’s also been selling Apple.

Now it’s important to understand Apple and what he thinks about Apple. And we can see that he’s definitely selling it right here. Berkshire Hathaway continue to slash its stake in the tech company as part of a selling spree. So he’s selling a lot of certain things. Bank stocks tech stocks. It reduced its position in Apple to sixty nine point nine billion all the way down. Sixty nine million. It says in just over a year Buffett has ditched almost two thirds of his stake in Apple. Now I want to come back to a statement that he made about Apple at a recent shareholder meeting which makes this seem pretty interesting and puzzling especially considering the timing.

But because of these two big sales selling or not selling dumping Bank of America and dumping Apple stock Berkshire now has this record three hundred and twenty five billion dollars in cash. It’s unbelievable that a single company or person or whatever you want to call it could have that much money. And just to visualize it I kind of want to show you what this looks like. Again the charts are important. Now this goes all the way back here to 2010. And so you can see this trend going up up up up up here.

We have about 2020 right here. So it’s been going up and now the cash has completely exploded. But the problem with this is that we also have lots of inflation. So what we want to know is what’s the real data behind this not that what we call nominal not a total amount of value. We want to look at it in relation to other things. But before we get down that track let’s just keep going and see exactly what we should be thinking or maybe what he’s thinking. So is this giving us a warning.

And if so warnings of what we know there’s lots of I can’t call them black swan events because we see them. Maybe they’re gray swan events or we just know there’s lots of potential landmines out there in the market and the economy that can go off in any given time. And it’s interesting because again Warren Buffett is a long term investor. His partner Charlie Munger said a bunch of interesting quotes one I use all the time is that the big money is not made in the buying and the selling the big money is made in the waiting.

So they’re long term investors. Warren Buffett talks about how if every new investor came into their career knowing they had only 20 moves that’s it outperform everybody else. So they’re all about long term investing. They’ve held Warren’s held Coca Cola since like 1965. He brags about that sees candy things like that he’s owned forever. So to see a long term investor selling why what is going on. Well is it the persistent inflation. So the Fed is now pivoting but inflation is not going away as a matter of fact it’s raging back right now.

Is it the interest rate hike. So the Fed is raising rates and then other lowering rates. But now bond yields are going up even though they’re lowering rates. That’s a problem. Is it the global instability. You know not just the election potential you know nuclear wars happening all over the world things like that. Is it the US debt levels. The fiscal debt is a big problem and not just for the United States. I mean people around the world the BIS the IMF are even warning that the US’s debt is unsustainable. So it could be any number of these or all of them.

And more importantly is it one or all of these things. And what should we be doing. Should we be bracing for impact like Uncle Warren. Should we be dumping our stocks. Well let’s just take a look at that and see exactly what’s going on. OK. So what we want to understand is why he’s doing this. And again if we look at some things he said his shareholder meetings and some of these different things we can start to get a better understanding. Remember we don’t want to panic off of a headline.

We want to dig in peek behind the hood and see what’s going on. So the first thing is. Banks are crashing. You’ve probably been seeing the headlines we know in 2023 with a couple banks go collapse. We know just last week another bank collapsed and we know that banks are collapsing. Probably a lot more banks collapsing in our near future. They’ve been caught off sides by the bond yields. And so we can see that as a matter of fact banks right now are sitting on the largest amount of unrealized losses that we’ve seen in history.

So here’s a chart of banks since 2006. And this is their profits and losses. And what we can see right now is they’re sitting on an enormous amount of losses the worst in history. And so one do you want to own banks when they’re sitting on all these losses and more and more banks will probably be going out of business. Probably not. I wouldn’t want to. I don’t own any bank stocks. And I are they crashing. Again we need to understand these things. Well we know that commercial banks are buying treasuries at the fastest pace since the pandemic.

So the banks are buying the treasuries because of the way the bond market is working the treasuries are becoming worth less worthless worth less which is causing the bank to have the worst unrealized losses they’ve had in history. And they’re continuing to do it. They continue to do the same thing that’s causing massive problems for them. Why. Why are they doing that. And what does this tell us about the future. Well the reason why is for a number of reasons. One who’s going to buy the U.S. government’s treasuries if the banks don’t.

Foreign buying demand has completely diminished or at least gone down quite a bit foreign central banks think twice on U.S. treasuries. So the foreign central banks don’t want to buy them anymore. And so I made a video. I don’t know it’s probably been a year or two ago talking about how the banks were going to become like basically utilities. Meaning they’re going to be used by the government in order to get the treasuries out in the market and not really so much for you and I to be invested into. That’s why I don’t invest into banks.

Maybe that’s what Warren Buffett has seen. We can see in this headline right here. Banks are binging on bonds but not because they want to. Not because they want to. If the foreign buying demand goes away who’s going to pick them up. Well it’s going to be the commercial banks which is going to continue to have worse and worse returns or the largest unrealized losses we’ve seen in history and potentially some banks going out of business. Now Warren Buffett doesn’t want to be holding those types of assets that are basically utility. They’re buying assets not because they want to not because they think they’ll have great performance but because they have to.

And that means that the performance of those banks is going to be greatly diminished and many of them will probably go out of business. Now I don’t want to own them. Obviously Warren Buffett doesn’t want either. Now does that mean that I should be worried that banks are going to get you all scared about. No not really. I think depositors will be made whole by the FDIC but I don’t want to own them. They’re not going to be good performing businesses. Okay what else can we see. Well potentially we can see some hints from his address at his last shareholder meeting.

We can see here that Buffett’s kind words for Apple. So why is he selling. We just went over Bank of America. Why is he selling Apple. Extended to May this year at the Berkshire’s annual meeting. He lauded Apple as quote an even better one better than better than what better than Coca Cola better than American Express. So he was just saying in May that Apple was a better investment than Coca Cola that he’s owned for whatever 50 60 years and American Express when asked why he’d sold some of Apple stock. They asked him during the first quarter Buffett alluded to tax rates.

He said selling now would benefit Berkshire shareholders should the U.S. raise capital gains taxes. And so we have a you know the Biden and Harris administration potentially now Harris administration saying that they’re going to raise taxes. And so a lot of people are trying to angle for that. And so like well let’s start trimming the fat. Now let’s deal with these taxes at this rate before they go much higher. Maybe that’s what it is. So maybe it was the banks are crashing. Maybe it’s taxes. But I think more importantly we have what we have to understand here is that there’s sort of like this regime change.

And we want to look at not just the data of the nominal amount or the 325 billion. That’s the shocking number. But what we really want to look at is the ratio between cash and total portfolios. What percentage of his total portfolio is in cash. That’s the most important thing for me to look at because the 325 billion is affected by inflation. I want to see as a percentage and what we can see going back to this chart since 1995 this is the percentage the ratio of cash of the total portfolio Berkshire Hathaway.

And what we can see is during 2008 it got very high. We can see during 2020 it got very high and we can see right here it’s gotten very high. So to the 325 billion is a great number for headlines and it’s great to get you to click on this video. But I want to bring some sanity back to the market. Sorry if you like the fear. I want to bring some sanity back and say that yes it’s a lot of cash during 25 billion. But as a percentage of total portfolio it’s high and yes it’s high around the 2008 market high around the 2020 market which are not good markets to compare to.

But it’s not that unusual. It’s on the high side but it’s not alarmingly crazy high. Okay the other thing to keep in mind is that while this is at the high end of their historic you know averages again it’s not alarmingly high it’s on the high side for sure and especially compared to these other two things. But we want to understand also what’s really going on. As I said there’s sort of this regime change if you will. And so obviously he wants to get out of bank stocks. Again I’m not owning bank stocks.

I wouldn’t recommend owning bank stocks. If I own them I’d be selling them also. So he sold this massive cash position billions and billions of dollars of that. And he’s also taking some cream off of Apple possibly because what he talked about with taxes. But the problem for him is not the problem for you and I. The problem for him is that now he has about three hundred and twenty five billion dollars. What do you do with that. You see I like to play in the high growth areas mostly around tech stocks.

We’ll talk about that in a little bit where I like to put my money. But you can’t deploy three hundred billion dollars into those. You can’t deploy three hundred billion dollars into Bitcoin or a lot of these smaller players I like to be in. So where do you put three hundred and twenty five billion dollars. Again his problem is not the same as our problem. The other thing to keep in mind is that right now that is sitting in U.S. treasuries and that is throwing off about 16 billion a year in just free cash flow.

So if you’re a shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway or you had that you’d probably be pretty happy to get 16 billion dollars a year for free money for sitting and waiting. Remember Warren Buffett says 20 moves in your career. So Charlie Munger said the big money is made in the waiting. So he’s perfectly fine waiting for the next big opportunity. We’re going to this regime change right now and collecting 16 billion a year before he takes that next fat pitch. OK. Now what does this mean for you and I. OK. Well first of all isn’t he telling us to caution.

Is he saying we should take a look or is he waving the red flag like warning get out. Well in my opinion we should definitely pay attention to what he’s doing and we should adjust based off of that. Again if you own bank stocks probably not a good place to be. So for example I don’t believe as a depositor my money at the bank is at risk. The FDIC will make me whole. The Fed the government will make me whole. However if I own bank stocks and they go down just like we saw in 2023 I could lose my investment into the bank.

So I wouldn’t want to own bank stocks. Number one if I’m in banks I’m out. But again we’re not the same. I don’t have three hundred twenty five billion dollars to invest. And so if you want to invest your ten thousand your hundred thousand even your millions not a big deal. There’s lots of places for those to go. And so I say that we want to stay to the plan. We want to focus on our high growth. The assets like I talk about in these quantum leap these tech cycles that’s AI Bitcoin decentralization the convergence of those things commodities real things.

Those are still good place to go. Gold obviously is on a tear. He doesn’t like gold but don’t don’t blame that on gold. It’s because he doesn’t buy assets that don’t produce things. But we want to focus on high growth. We’re not the same. That’s my thing. That’s my reading. But I wonder what you think. Do you think that the three hundred twenty five billion dollars is a sign for you to get out or do you have cooler heads prevailing based off of the data and the insights that he’s left for us.

Let me know in the comments down below. Let me know if you like this video. Give me a thumbs up if you do. If you don’t. I don’t know. Give me thumbs down. But at least tell me why in the comments down below hit subscribe if you’re not subscribed. And that’s what I got. All right. To your success. I’m out. [tr:trw].

See more of Mark Moss on their Public Channel and the MPN Mark Moss channel.