⚠ Nothing Big Enough, or Cheap EnoughModerate threat

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) — threat to the moat

The reach exceeds the opportunities — elephants are rare and everyone hunts them now.

The reach to buy anything is worth little if there is nothing worth buying, and Berkshire increasingly finds itself in exactly that position. At a trillion-dollar scale, only the largest acquisitions and stakes can meaningfully affect returns, and such elephants are rare, seldom for sale, and — after a long bull market — rarely cheap. The result is cash piling up faster than genuinely attractive, needle-moving opportunities appear.

OxyChem against the cash pile ($B)Cash and T-bills, June 2026$365.5BOxyChem, January 2026$9.4BConsolidated cash and Treasury bills; Berkshire Form 10-Q, June 2026
The largest deal in four years used less than 3% of the pile.

The danger is a slow one: not a loss, but a drift toward ordinary returns as the enterprise is forced to choose among sitting on low-returning cash, overpaying for the few large deals available, or buying back its own stock. Each is defensible, but none replicates the outsized gains that bargains once delivered. The very reach that is a strength becomes a source of frustration when the field it can hunt in has grown so small.

Berkshire manages this honestly — it would rather hold cash than overpay, and buybacks offer a sensible outlet — but the shrinking opportunity set is a real and permanent consequence of success. An owner should expect long fallow stretches punctuated by occasional large moves, and should not mistake a full cash balance for a lack of discipline; more often it is the discipline itself, waiting — the pile peaked at $397.4 billion at the end of March 2026 and, after OxyChem and the first half's stock buying, was still $365.5 billion in June.123

References
  1. ReportedAn owner should expect long fallow stretches punctuated by occasional large moves, and should not mistake a full cash balance for a lack of discipline; more often it is the discipline itself, waiting — the pile peaked at $397.4 billion at the end of March 2026 and, after OxyChem and the first half's stock buying, was still $365.5 billion in June.
    Berkshire Hathaway Form 10-Q, quarter ended 31 March 2026 - insurance and other cash and cash equivalents $51,478M and Treasury Bills $339,261M, railroad, utilities and energy cash $6,644M (consolidated $397.4B); insurance and other cash and Treasury Bills net of payables $373.5B; equity securities $288.0B; OxyChem acquired 2 January 2026 — Q1 2026 · publ. May 2026 · source ↗
  2. ReportedAn owner should expect long fallow stretches punctuated by occasional large moves, and should not mistake a full cash balance for a lack of discipline; more often it is the discipline itself, waiting — the pile peaked at $397.4 billion at the end of March 2026 and, after OxyChem and the first half's stock buying, was still $365.5 billion in June.
    Berkshire Hathaway Form 10-Q, quarter ended 30 June 2026 - after-tax earnings (underwriting $1,731M vs $1,992M, insurance investment income $3,059M vs $3,367M, BNSF $1,558M vs $1,466M, BHE $891M vs $702M, manufacturing, service and retailing $4,470M vs $3,601M, investment gains $12,684M, net earnings $25,667M); GEICO pre-tax underwriting $994M vs $1,821M, combined ratio 91.2% vs 83.5%; Reinsurance $913M vs $650M; float $177.5B; insurance and other cash and Treasury Bills net $359.2B; consolidated cash $35,096M + $324,905M + $5,513M; equity securities $323.8B; H1 purchases of equities $39.4B and sales $27.8B; acquisitions of businesses net of cash $9.7B; $4.8B of treasury stock acquired in H1, most in Q2; OxyChem about $9.4B on 2 January; Taylor Morrison agreed 31 May at $72.50 a share, about $6.8B, closed 24 July; notes payable of insurance and other $43.3B; shareholders' equity $747.9B; BNSF revenue $6,601M vs $5,769M, fuel $1,173M vs $698M; BHE revenue $6,735M vs $6,418M; investment income down 9.1% on lower interest rates — Q2 2026 · publ. August 2026 · source ↗
  3. Moat Explorer calcAn owner should expect long fallow stretches punctuated by occasional large moves, and should not mistake a full cash balance for a lack of discipline; more often it is the discipline itself, waiting — the pile peaked at $397.4 billion at the end of March 2026 and, after OxyChem and the first half's stock buying, was still $365.5 billion in June.
    Moat Explorer calculation from Berkshire's Forms 10-K FY2016-FY2025 and 10-Qs for Q1 and Q2 2026: operating earnings = net earnings less after-tax investment gains and the 2025 impairments (FY2023 $37,350M, FY2024 $47,437M, FY2025 $44,486M; Q2 2026 $12,983M vs $11,160M; H1 2026 $24,329M vs $20,801M); consolidated cash and Treasury Bills $397.4B (31 March 2026) and $365.5B (30 June 2026); underwriting as a share of float; OxyChem at 2.6% of the cash pile; five-line after-tax earnings sums — 2016 to Q2 2026 · publ. 2026-09-23 · source ↗
Sources
Generated September 23, 2026