• Warren Buffett is being praised for paring Apple and stacking cash before the market slumped.
• Social media is full of Buffett quotes about market downturns and memes featuring the investor.
• Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sold a net $134 billion of stocks in 2024 and built a record cash pile.

Warren Buffett has sparked a raft of comments and memes on social media after the legendary investor sold most of his massive Apple stake and built a record cash pile before the stock market tumbled earlier this week.

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway nearly doubled its stockpile of cash, Treasury bills, and other liquid assets last year to $334 billion (or $321 billion if you subtract payables for T-bill purchases).

The conglomerate's cash hoard ballooned largely because it sold a net $134 billion of stocks in 2024, and spent less than $3 billion on buybacks, halting them entirely in the second half. For comparison, it sold a net $24 billion of stocks and repurchased more than $9 billion worth of Berkshire stock in 2023.

"Despite what some commentators currently view as an extraordinary cash position at Berkshire, the great majority of your money remains in equities," Buffett reassured Berkshire shareholders in his annual letter in February, referring to both the stocks and businesses that his company owns.

Buffett didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sell, sell, sell

Berkshire owned about 906 million shares of Apple worth $174 billion at the start of 2024, meaning the iPhone maker accounted for 49% of the total value of its stock portfolio. Over the next nine months, it cut its top holding by 67% to 300 million shares, worth $75 billion at the end of December.

Buffett and his team also pared their No. 2 holding, Bank of America, by 34% to 680 million shares in the second half of 2024, cutting the position's value from $41 billion to just under $30 billion.

As of Tuesday's close, Apple and Bank of America shares have dropped 15% and 20% each from their November highs.

Apple is still up 15% since the start of 2024, however, meaning Buffett left money on the table by cashing out when he did. If he kept his stake intact throughout 2024 it would be worth nearly $200 billion.

Bank of America is trading around the $40 mark, as it was at the end of June last year, meaning Buffett probably hasn't won or lost big from selling.

There's nothing to say the market sell-off, which has pulled the S&P 500 down 9% and the Nasdaq Composite down 13% from their record closes on February 19, won't worsen as the Trump administration's policies continue to fuel recession fears.

Moreover, it's important to consider where Buffett has invested the sale proceeds. Owning Treasurys is more lucrative than in the past; the one-year yield has jumped from under 1% to over 4% in just over three years, primarily because rising inflation spurred the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to relieve upward pressure on prices.

"But I don't mind at all, under current conditions, building the cash position," Buffett said at Berkshire's annual meeting last year. "I think when I look at the alternative of what's available in the equity markets, and I look at the composition of what's going on in the world, we find it quite attractive."

Buffett is a long-term investor who's owned stocks such as Coca-Cola and American Express for decades. It's unlikely he pared his portfolio because he saw trouble coming and wanted to cash out before the next market crash — and he probably won't care much about a few months of stock performance.

He's publicly soured on banks and pointed to higher bond yields and the prospect of steeper taxes on capital gains as two reasons he was happy to take some Apple profits and buy Treasurys instead. He's also explained his growing cash pile reflects a dearth of bargains with both private and public companies trading at heady valuations.

It's also worth noting that quarterly portfolio filings provide limited insight into an investor's strategy. They're only a snapshot of their holdings on a single day with a six-week lag, and they exclude shares sold short, foreign-listed stocks, private investments, and nonstock assets.

Even if Buffett isn't selling stocks and stacking cash because he expects a market downturn, his bearish positioning could still make him a winner if this one continues.

Not only will the strategy temper the impact on his stock portfolio, but it means he'll have plenty of dry powder to deploy on cut-price businesses and discounted stocks, as he did during the financial crisis.

Words to remember

Buffett's social media followers aren't only applauding the timing of his Apple sales and cash build. Probably in a bid to shore up market sentiment, they're lining up to quote his famous advice to "be greedy when others are fearful."

Moreover, they're sharing the column he published in the depths of the financial crisis, in which he urged others to buy stocks on the cheap.

Buffett has also won plaudits for getting wealthier when many of his billionaire peers are taking big blows to their fortunes. That reflects a 9% rise in Berkshire stock this year while many blue-chip tech stocks have declined.

The "Oracle of Omaha" has often faced skepticism and claims that he's lost his touch during previous booms. Now the market mood has turned, he's back in fashion.

• Eight tech titans have taken a $266 billion blow to their collective wealth this year.
• Their combined net worth fell by $64 billion on Monday as the Nasdaq had its worst day since 2022.
• Elon Musk has had $132 billion, or 30% of his fortune, erased in 2025 following Tesla's stock slide.

Eight tech billionaires have seen their combined fortunes shrink by an estimated $266 billion this year as President Donald Trump's policies continue to spook investors.

That figure exceeds the market value of most of America's largest companies including Salesforce, McDonald's, and Wells Fargo.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk leads the list of wealth losers, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The world's richest person has had $132 billion, or 30% of his fortune, wiped out in the past 10 weeks following the 45% slide in Tesla stock in that period.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Dell Technologies' Michael Dell, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang have each seen more than $20 billion erased from their respective net worths this year as their companies' stock prices have tumbled. Amazon and Oracle are both down about 11%, while Dell and Nvidia have slumped by north of 20%.

Rounding out the group are Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin — down about $18 billion and $17 billion each this year following a 12% drop in shares of Google's parent company —and Steve Ballmer, who's down about $13 billion after a 10% decline in Microsoft stock.

The eight tech titans' collective net worth fell by $64 billion on Monday alone as the Nasdaq Composite slid 4%, its steepest one-day loss since 2022.

The sell-off was sparked by Trump cautioning there would be a "period of transition" for the US economy in a Fox News interview on Sunday.

The president didn't rule out a recession when asked if he expected one this year. He said his focus was on strengthening America and achieving long-term prosperity: "You can't really watch the stock market."

Trump's sweeping economic agenda is focused on equalizing US trade relations using tariffs, curtailing immigration, lifting regulations, cutting taxes, and downsizing the federal government. His policies have reignited inflation fears and stoked recession worries.

The increased uncertainty has dampened the buzz around AI that had lifted tech stocks and the wider market to record highs this year. One consequence is the world's 16 wealthiest people are worth $236 billion less than they were at the start of January after a $87 billion decline on Monday, per Bloomberg's rich list.

Microsoft's Bill Gates and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg were still up between $4 billion and $5 billion for the year at Monday's close. The Facebook cofounder took a $9.5 billion wealth hit on the day — second only to Musk's $29 billion blow.

Three others on the list are in the green for 2025 as they're less exposed to tech: Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett is up about $14 billion, while LVMH's Bernard Arnault and Inditex's Amancio Ortega are up between $6 billion and $7 billion.

The richest of the rich shouldn't feel too sorry for themselves, as they had a stellar 2024. The top 10 billionaires at the end of December were up more than $500 billion for the year, and worth a combined $2 trillion — about as much as Amazon or Alphabet.