⚠ When Patience Is Just Missing OutLow threat

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

Waiting has a cost, and sometimes the bargain never comes.

Patience and paralysis look identical from the outside, and telling them apart is only possible in hindsight. Berkshire's willingness to hold cash and wait has been vindicated many times — but there is no law that says the next great bargain will arrive before the cash it is hoarding could have compounded handsomely in the meantime. Years spent waiting for a crash that does not come, while markets climb, are years of forgone return that no later bargain may fully recover.

Cash and T-bills, insurance and other businesses ($B)$70.9B2016$109B2018$135.0B2020$125.0B2022$318.0B2024$369.0B2025$359.2BJun 26Year-end figures from the Forms 10-K; 2024 onward net of unsettled purchases
The pile quintupled in a decade, most of it after 2022.

The worry sharpens at today's cash level. With a record pile earning a safe but modest yield, Berkshire is implicitly betting that a future opportunity will justify the wait — and if that opportunity is smaller, later, or scarcer than hoped, the patience will have cost more than it saved. Critics have argued for years that the company held too much cash for too long as good businesses grew ever more expensive.

This is a genuine tension rather than a clear error. Discipline that refuses to overpay is precisely what protects Berkshire from the blunders that fell aggressive rivals, and the option value of dry powder is real. But an owner should recognize that waiting has a cost as surely as acting does, and that even great patience can shade into a habit of standing aside while the world compounds without you — $365.5 billion of cash and Treasury bills at the end of June 2026 stood aside.12

References
  1. ReportedBut an owner should recognize that waiting has a cost as surely as acting does, and that even great patience can shade into a habit of standing aside while the world compounds without you — $365.5 billion of cash and Treasury bills at the end of June 2026 stood aside.
    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 ↗
  2. Moat Explorer calcBut an owner should recognize that waiting has a cost as surely as acting does, and that even great patience can shade into a habit of standing aside while the world compounds without you — $365.5 billion of cash and Treasury bills at the end of June 2026 stood aside.
    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