Warren Buffett Just Sent a Hidden Warning
By Fin Tek
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Buffett Sells Apple, Bank of America, Builds Cash**: Warren Buffett continued his trend of selling more stocks than he bought, trimming Apple and Bank of America, and completely exiting T-Mobile. This adds to Berkshire Hathaway's record cash pile, signaling a lack of compelling investment opportunities. [00:58] - **Buffett's Fear: US Fiscal Policy and Weakening Dollar**: Buffett's primary concern is US fiscal policy, fearing that excessive government borrowing will lead to currency devaluation. His recent trades are a strategic hedge against this potential weakening of the US dollar. [00:23], [03:30] - **New Buys: Capital-Intensive, Cash-Flowing Businesses**: Berkshire Hathaway added new positions in companies like Allegian, Dr. Horton, Lamar Advertising, and Newcore, alongside increasing Chevron and United Health Group. These are capital-intensive businesses with strong cash flow, favored for their tangible assets and value during inflationary periods. [06:15], [07:11] - **Tangible Assets as Inflation Hedge**: Buffett's strategy includes investing in companies with tangible assets like property, plant, and equipment. These assets hold their value during high inflation, providing a hedge against a depreciating dollar and increasing replacement costs. [07:38] - **UnitedHealth Group: Contrarian Value Play**: Buffett made a significant contrarian investment in United Health Group, a stock the market had been down on. Despite not being asset-heavy, he acquired it at a deep discount and it generates massive free cash flow, aligning with his focus on safety, cash flow, and price discipline. [08:24] - **Focus on Real Value, Not the 'Casino'**: Buffett uses a 'cathedral and casino' metaphor to describe the economy and stock market. He advises focusing on the real value of businesses (the cathedral) rather than the speculative trading of the stock market (the casino). [12:26]
Topics Covered
- Is US Government Debt Devaluing Your Dollar?
- Buffett's Bearish Playbook: Cash, Value, and Tangible Assets.
- Tangible Assets: Your Best Hedge Against Inflation?
- Your Buffett Playbook: Build Cash, Avoid Hype.
- Cathedral vs. Casino: Focus on Real Business Value.
Full Transcript
Well, it's finally happened. Warren
Buffett is back and he just revealed his
latest trades in this Berkshire
Hathway's quarterly 13F filing. And
these trades give us a look into
Buffett's thoughts on the market going
into the end of the year. And these
trades echo a clear warning that Buffett
gave in the last Berkshire meeting about
the future of the US dollar. And it's
one that most investors are ignoring.
Fiscal policy is what scares me in the
United States. And that's the big thing
we worry about with the United States
currency. The natural course of
government is to is to make the currency
worth less.
So that warning about rising debt
levels, government spending, and high
valuations in the market back in May
2025, it wasn't just talk. Because when
you follow the money today, Buffett is
clearly positioning his portfolio for
something big. So let's look at these
trades and Buffett's playbook behind
them to understand how we can best
prepare as investors.
So, if we look at Buffett's trades this
quarter, Buffett continued to sell more
shares than he bought, trimming his top
position in Apple by 4.6 billion or 6%
and selling just over $1 billion in Bank
of America, continuing the trend of
reducing Bergkshire's exposure to the
financial sector. And both of these
stocks are traditionally very high
performers. So Buffett looks like he's
trying to pull money off the table here,
adding to the $134 billion in cash that
he already built up in 2024. And that
wasn't the only sale. Bergkshire also
completely exited their billiondoll
T-Mobile position and around half of
their Charter Communications position.
These sales are a big deal because this
marks the 11th straight quarter that
Bergkshire has been selling more stocks
than they've been buying and their cash
and treasuries pile is at its highest
level in 60 years of Berkshire history.
So Buffett is building up cash so that
he has dry powder when the opportunity
comes along and this matches what he was
saying in his 2025 letter. Often nothing
looks compelling. Very infrequently we
find ourselves kneede in opportunities.
So Buffett isn't seeing that many
opportunities in the market right now.
But Berkshire also purchased shares,
including these six companies, which as
we'll see in a second, look like a
strategic hedge against what Buffett
sees coming for the market. So let's
look at what those dangers are, and then
we'll get into the six stocks that
Buffett has been buying. Because when an
investor holds a lot of cash, it's
usually a bet on the market declining.
So Buffett has two big fears in the
market right now. First off, he's
worried that borrowing and hype is
inflating the market to unreasonable
levels. This chart shows that stocks
that have been bought using borrowed
money has been outpacing the growth of
the broader market over the past 30
years, meaning more and more of today's
market is built on debt. Now, I covered
this situation and Buffett's warning of
a loss decade in stocks in a previous
video, but it's not hard to see why
Buffett might think the market is
overvalued today. For example, in the AI
space, OpenAI CEO has called the AI
market a bubble, and those high
valuations extend into the market in
general. The S&P 500 is now 30% made up
of just seven stocks. But Buffett's
second big worry, which is going to
matter more in the long term, is the
growing amount of US government debt.
So, I did a whole video breaking this
down as well, but here is the short
version. Buffett warned that if the
government borrows too much money,
eventually they won't be able to pay it
back. So instead, they'll just print
more and more dollars, which will make
the dollar worth less. So in his words,
fiscal policy is what scares me in the
United States, and the natural course of
government is to make the currency worth
less. And we saw this quarter that these
weren't just off-hand comments.
Bergkshire's positioning is a direct
response to Buffett's fears about the
government messing with the currency. So
I'll link those two videos below for
anyone who wants to go deeper on those
warnings. But what I want to focus on
now is how Buffett is reacting with
actions, not words, to what he's seeing
in the market today because these stocks
lay out a playbook that we can use to
react to the danger that Buffett is
seeing. And we can learn as we see
Bergkshire's strategy play out in real
time. And Buffett's not the only one
sounding the alarm here. Ray Dalio
recently tweeted that the US government
debt would reach 55 to60 trillion in the
next decade. And it's only gotten this
far because of what Buffett calls the
US's special status. Basically, global
trust in the US and its institutions.
But trust can only take you so far. But
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long. And now back to Buffett's latest
trades and what they tell us about his
playbook going forward. So here is a
chart of Berkshire Hathway's entire
stock portfolio. So despite trimming
Apple and some banks, you'll see that
the top stocks still look familiar.
Apple, AMX, Bank of America, Coca-Cola.
But if we zoom in on just his most
recent buys, they all follow a very
similar pattern. So Berkshire opened
four brand new positions I want to cover
this quarter. Allegian, a security
products provider, home builder Dr.
Horton, Lamar Advertising, and Newcore,
a steel maker. He also added to his oil
and gas holdings with $450 million more
Chevron shares. And he started a
position in United Health Group. And
even though these are all different
industries and the stocks kind of seem
unrelated on the surface, they are all
in capitalintensive cash producing
businesses, which as we'll see in a
second is a direct response to the
warning that Buffett gave us several
months ago. So let's look at the
strategy here. Why is Buffett buying
these six stocks? And why now? Because
this isn't random. This is Buffett
showing us his playbook for the next
phase of the market. And we can learn a
lot more from it than just copying his
trades, especially because these 13F
filings can be delayed by up to 45 days.
So, what do all these stocks have in
common? Well, number one, they all have
tangible assets that will hold their
value in high inflation. Number two,
they all have strong cash flow. These
are all income machines. And number
three, they are cheap relative to the
overall market. So, let's look at that
in more detail because part of that is
just classic Buffett value investing,
buying stocks at a discount, but it's
also something more. It can also act as
a hedge against a falling dollar. So, a
lot of this rests on that first point,
tangible assets. You can measure this in
a company by looking at PP&E, which is
property, plant, and equipment. This is
the real stuff, the machines, buildings,
land, asset that holds value, even if
the dollar doesn't. So, why does that
matter? Well, if the dollar falls,
physical goods become more expensive to
replace. But if you already own them,
that means that they hold their value.
So, let's say inflation cuts the
dollar's value in half and you have a
really expensive piece of steel making
equipment. Well, now that just doubles
in cost to replace, but if you already
own it, its value just doubled without
you doing anything. So, as a hedge, the
bet makes sense as protection against
Buffett's worst case scenario where
rising government debt fuels rising
inflation. But not every trade
Bergkshire made fits that mold exactly.
Buffett also made a big contrarian trade
into a stock the market has been beating
down recently, putting $1.6 billion into
United Health Group, a stock that
Buffett has been quietly building up in
secret since around late 2024 in secret
to avoid spiking the stock price. But
while United Health may not be an
assetheavy business, Buffett bought it
at a very deep discount. It actually
spiked in price by 17% when his trades
were revealed. And like the other
stocks, it generates massive free cash
flow that it can use in a downturn. So
even exceptions follow the rules.
Safety, cash flow, and price discipline.
So okay, that's the logic behind the
trades. Let's look at some data to see
if this strategy actually works
historically and how well it might work
for us in a regular non-billionaire
investors portfolio. So this chart shows
how different industries have performed
during periods of inflation. You can see
that businesses with hard assets,
including coal, oil, steel, and
electrical equipment, outperform during
periods of very high inflation. And
here's a second study by a quant trading
firm. These are the guys who run
millions of simulations trying to find
any edge on the market. They found the
same thing. Real assets are one of the
most reliable ways to benefit from high
inflation. So, this all lines up with
Buffett's strategy of buying companies
with hard assets to protect against the
dollar. But wait, wait, wait, hold up.
This all assumes that we're going to see
high inflation in the short term. And
that is not something that everybody
agrees on. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell
has said again and again, the Fed will
not cut interest rates until inflation
is clearly under control because Fed
rate cuts can actually reignite high
inflation if they come too early. But
Goldman Sachs thinks that inflation is
actually cooling off and we actually
might see a rate cut as soon as
September. So there's a lot of differing
opinions on whether or not inflation
will cool off in the short term. But
Buffett has made his long-term stance
pretty clear. Paper money can see its
value evaporate if fiscal folly
prevails. And we've already come close
to the edge. He says US federal debt now
exceeds the entire GDP of the country
and it doesn't show any signs of slowing
down. So, like most things with
investing, it's not a guarantee. It's a
risk, but it's a risk we can prepare
for. So, let's look at Buffett strategy
as a whole and what we can do in our own
portfolios without just copying a
billionaire's trades. And if you found
anything valuable in this video so far,
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thing for the YouTube investing space.
At least that's the goal. But let's go
ahead and look at Buffett's strategy and
the three main pillars that he's using.
So number one is build cash and wait for
opportunities to appear. This isn't
panic and selling out. It's patience and
waiting for opportunities. Number two,
avoid overpriced growth. And number
three, lean into more asset heavy cash
flowing businesses that will do well in
high inflation. Not going all in on
these, but hedging against the risks in
a calm, disciplined way. But now, here's
what I'm going to be doing with my
portfolio based on all this research.
And then after that, I'll get to one
more story from Buffett that I think is
extremely valuable to investors in
today's market.
So, first off, I don't plan to sell all
my stocks, but I will lean more into
these capital heavy businesses. Not
100%. These are slower growing
long-term, but maybe 5 to 10% for now
and watch to see if inflation starts
kicking in. I also won't be selling my
stocks to build up cash because unlike
Buffett, I can build up my cash pile
from my income, setting some money aside
each month. That's actually one
advantage that you have over Buffett is
you can actually move the needle on your
cash by earning more income or saving
more money. The point is anything you
can do to build cash today will have
compounded effects in the future. But
Buffett left one more warning in the
form of a metaphor that I think
describes today's market extremely well.
So Buffett said this, "Capitalism in the
United States has succeeded like nothing
you've ever seen. But what it is is a
combination of this magnificent
cathedral which has produced an economy
like nothing the world's ever seen and
then it's got this massive casino
attached. So the cathedral is like real
business value and the casino is like
the stock market.
And in the casino everybody's having a
good time and there's lots of money
changing hands and everything, but the
cathedral is what got to make sure the
cathedral gets gets fed to. It's very
important that the United States in the
next hundred years make sure that the
cathedral is not overtaken by the
casino. Focus on real value. Ignore the
casino. And I'll be publishing more
videos on these 13F filings from famous
investors over the next few weeks. So
subscribe to stay tuned. And this video
is the best one to watch in the
meantime.
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