Buffett om årets börsfall: ”Det här är ingenting”

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett said the company isn’t finding much to buy in the stock market after its decline this year.

In an interview on CNBC, Buffett said, “We aren’t finding things” in the stock market after the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq composite fell into correction territory with drops of 10% from their highs. The S&P 500 ended Monday down 7.5% this year.

Asked by CNBC anchor Becky Quick about the market decline, Buffett said, “This is nothing,” adding that the market had been down 50% three times during his tenure at Berkshire, dating back to 1965.

Buffett added that Berkshire would deploy capital if there is a big decline in the market. He noted that Berkshire has more than $350 billion of cash, mostly in Treasury bills. Buffett said Berkshire had purchased $17 billion of T-bills at the weekly auction on Monday.

Buffett said he can make equity investments at Berkshire but runs anything by CEO Greg Abel, who oversees the $300 billion equity portfolio as part of his responsibilities.

Buffett was succeeded by Abel as CEO at the end of 2025.

Buffett praised Abel, saying that “Greg covers more ground in a day than I would in a week” during his prime, noting that Berkshire owns some 200 businesses. Buffett says he’s in the office every day, but he doesn’t accomplish much given his age, 95.

Buffett said he gets updates on the markets during the day and Berkshire’s trading activity from the company’s longtime trading manager Mark Millard, who has been at Berkshire for at least 30 years. Millard handles the stock and bond trading at Berkshire. Buffett said Berkshire gets by with just one trader, adding that investment firms don’t need a lot of people to handle their trades. Berkshire’s equity portfolio totals about $300 billion and over $350 billion of cash, mostly T-bills.

Buffett also addressed the Jeffrey Epstein files and his annual donations to the Gates Foundation, saying he will “wait and see” about making future annual contributions to the foundations. His next big annual donations will come in June.

The Gates Foundation is headed by Bill Gates, who has been the subject of unfavorable publicity due to his association with Epstein including added details in the latest batch of Epstein files.

Buffett has given almost $50 billion to the Gates Foundation in annual donations since 2006, including about $5 billion last June. Buffett said in 2024 that his donations to the foundation would end after his death—reversing his original pledge at the time he began making the donations in 2006. Buffett was asked about his views on the Gates Foundation and Gates and answered cautiously.

Buffett said he hasn’t met or spoken with Gates since the files were released. Buffett said the files were read to him because he can’t read them himself because his “eyesight is so bad.”

Buffett noted that the Gates Foundation has enormous resources of $96 billion—the most of any foundation—largely from Bill Gates’ fortune from his Microsoft stock and other investments.

The other beneficiaries of Buffett’s philanthropic giving are family foundations, including three run by each of his three children. Those foundations will be recipients of the Buffett fortune of around $140 billion after his death.

Buffett said that it was a good thing that Epstein never came through Omaha, since there would have been a chance that Buffett would have met him and potentially have been photographed with him. Buffett said he never met Epstein.

“Thank heavens I never came near the guy,” Buffett said. He marveled at Epstein’s hold on so many people. He said Epstein was a master at finding the weakness in people, whether it be sex or taxes, and exploiting that.

Buffett digressed and spoke about former Bear Stearns CEO Alan “Ace” Greenberg, who originally hired Epstein about 50 years ago after Epstein decided to shift from teaching at a Manhattan private school to the investment business. “Ace was a good friend of mine,” Buffett said. Buffett’s point appeared to be that Epstein was able to fool even sharp managers like Greenberg. Greenberg died in 2014.

Buffett said the Epstein files are “ruining one person after another.”

Buffett added that Gates had treated him well personally, including getting the kind of food Buffett likes on trips and even arranging for Buffett to get The Wall Street Journal when they went to China.

Buffett addressed a range of topics in the hourlong interview, his first since giving up the CEO job at the start of 2026. Buffett won’t be on stage at the Berkshire annual meeting in May to answer shareholder questions. Abel will be on stage with several top Berkshire executives, and Buffett will be seated in the audience alongside other Berkshire directors.

He touched on the Federal Reserve, Apple, and potential acquisitions.

Buffett said that if it were up to him, the Fed’s inflation target would be zero and not 2%. Asked about Berkshire’s move to cut its Apple stake by over 75% from its peak to about 230 million shares now worth around $55 billion, Buffett said that Apple remains Berkshire’s largest equity holding.

At the peak, Apple was almost half of the Berkshire equity portfolio. It’s now closer to 20%. “I wasn’t happy for it to be larger than everything else combined,” Buffett said, suggesting that the sheer size of the Apple holding was a contributing factor to the reduction in the stake.

Buffett, a fan of Apple CEO Tim Cook, praised the Apple leader, calling him a “fantastic manager and a good guy. He gets along with everyone in the world.” Echoing prior comments, Buffett said Apple is better than any of Berkshire’s wholly owned businesses. He added that Berkshire has netted more than $100 billion in profits on its sales of Apple stock of close to 800 million shares.

Buffett said that Abel regularly gets calls from investment bankers pitching deals and businesses for Berkshire to buy, but Buffett hasn’t been impressed. “They’re not offering anything at an attractive price.”

Buffett said the calls usually go to Abel but he wishes he got more—in part because it would take Buffett “five seconds to say no.”

Berkshire did buy the OxyChem chemicals business from Occidental Petroleum in early January for under $10 billion and Buffett said that is likely to be a long-term holding for Berkshire. Barron’s has written that Berkshire got a very good price based on earnings and the improving outlook for chemicals companies.