Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A, BRK.B) has amassed the largest pile of cash ever held by a public company. At $344 billion, Berkshire Hathaway’s war chest is more than the combined cash reserves of Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), and NVIDIA Corp (NVDA)—despite them being collectively 14 times Berkshire’s market value. Also striking is that the record-breaking stockpile has doubled in just over a year.
So what gives? As in everyday life, companies save for three main reasons: to prepare to weather an economic storm, to make a major purchase, or because they think what’s available isn’t worth it—in market parlance, it’s overvalued.
A key chart value investors like Buffett use could help us narrow down the options: the S&P 500 index’s historic price-to-earnings ratio. That’s because it now sits 67%…
