Post #7295 by AdrianC on the Berkshire Hathaway board

Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) ❤

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...the conclusion is that the cash pile isn't particularly big, and won't be even at $200 billion, because there is almost nothing in the way of long term paper.
As the cash pile isn't a particularly big allocation, there is no reason to bemoan the fact that it hasn't yet been put to work or search for reasons that it hasn't been.

Another way of looking at this:
CNBC 2/24/20 WARREN BUFFETT: We own-- if you think about it, we’re 80-some-percent in equities. We may show $230 or $240 billion in equities, and that looks like we’re, against our market cap, we’re 40%. But we own 100% of these other businesses. Those are equities, too. I mean, we own a railroad. And we-- we own insurance companies. And those are-- those are equities. So, we’re about 80% in-- roughly in equities and about 20% in cash.

Taking 1.55x book as a proxy for IV:

Year (Cash + Fixed)/ IV
2010 28%
2011 25%
2012 25%
2013 21%
2014 23%
2015 22%
2016 22%
2017 23%
2018 24%
2019 22%
2020 23%
2021 20%
2022 20%
2023 22%
2024-1 23%

The current amount of cash isn't particularly high compared to IV.

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