I have a somewhat unique perspective on this because I owned Berkshire in the late 1980s, and I own it today.

I remember what waiting felt like then.

I bought a Berkshire A share for $6,950. The bid was $6,750—the ask $6,950. Berkshire traded over the counter, small volume, enormous bid-ask spreads, and no Wall Street following.

A very smart investor looked at me and said something I’ll never forget:

“John, you bought a collectible. You joined a club. But you don’t make money buying one share of stock for seven thousand dollars. You never have.”

In fact, there were plenty of reasons to wonder whether Berkshire was more a trophy than a real investment. There were no buybacks. No dividend. No coverage...and as a broker told me, “It trades by appointment only.”

And if the market decided Berkshire was worth 20% less or 40% less, there wasn’t anything underneath the stock. It floundered for weeks.

Today, I think waiting is the EASIEST part.

Why?

Today, roughly a billion dollars of cash is generated by the Berkshire machine every week. Berkshire owns nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars of productive assets. Those businesses are working every day while Berkshire waits for new opportunities.

The cash isn’t simply sitting in a vault, either. It earns a meaningful return while Berkshire waits.

And when the stock becomes sufficiently attractive, there’s another option that didn’t exist when I bought my share in the late 1980s:

Berkshire can buy Berkshire.

Berkshire repurchased billions of dollars of its own stock in the second quarter and then bought billions more in July.

That changes the psychology of waiting.

And here’s the irony:

Everyone complains Berkshire needs another elephant.

I understand the argument. Berkshire is so large that a $5 billion acquisition isn’t going to change the company very much.

But perhaps we’re focusing too much on the size of the next transaction and not enough on the size of the machine that’s already operating.

BNSF is working. And improving.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy is working. And improving.

GEICO is working. OK, yeah...not as well as recently, sure.

The manufacturing and service businesses are working. And improving.

The investment portfolio is working. Robust results recently.

The cash is earning money.

And every week, more cash arrives.

The needle IS moving.

It just isn’t moving because Greg Abel announced a $100 billion acquisition. He did not.

It is moving because Berkshire itself is an extraordinary compounding machine.

And this brings me to another issue: how should we think about all that cash?

I love reading and listening to Howard Marks. He often talks about “supposition” when thinking about the future—not blind faith, but a rational assumption made in the face of uncertainty.

His discussion of investing during the 2008–09 crisis triggered this thought. Marks and his partners were scared. They didn’t know whether the financial system would survive. But they knew they were finding extraordinarily cheap assets.

So they made a supposition:

Let’s suppose the world doesn’t end.

I think something similar applies to Berkshire today.

If Berkshire is earning roughly 3.8–3.9% on its cash and Treasury portfolio—roughly half of shareholders’ equity—the question isn’t whether Berkshire can somehow turn $360 billion into a spectacular return.

It’s whether Berkshire can eventually do meaningfully better than 3.8–3.9%.

I think that’s a pretty easy supposition to make.

I don’t know where the hell Berkshire’s 6% investments will come from. But I’m willing to make a rational supposition that, over a long enough period, some will. That’s a pretty low bar.

The $360 billion isn’t necessarily going to remain $360 billion earning 3.8%. It is capital waiting for its next use.

Berkshire can buy businesses. It can buy securities. It can wait for dislocations. And all the while, the existing businesses keep replenishing the capital pool.

I’m betting half of Berkshire’s capital isn’t earning 3.8% five years from now.

How? No idea.

But I’m making that supposition.

That was a pretty frightening supposition for Howard Marks.

Mine feels a lot less frightening.

We know what the capital is earning today.

We don’t know what it will earn when Berkshire decides the time is right to put it to work.

That uncertainty is real.

But uncertainty isn’t the same thing as risk.

Sometimes it is simply optionality.

And Berkshire has an extraordinary amount of it.

Waiting is the easiest part. It truly is.