Warren Buffett: 'The long-term trend is up'

Updated Sun, May 4, 2025, 11:46 AM 19 min read

A version of this post first appeared on TKer.co

OMAHA, Neb. — Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, remains bullish on the long run. At the same time, he acknowledges that people will continue to be distracted by short-term market moves, which will continue to be unpredictable.

"The long-term trend is up," Buffett said at Berkshire’s annual shareholders meeting on Saturday.

"Nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, next week, next month," he added. "But they spend all their time talking about it, because it's easy to talk about. But it has no value."

Buffett was responding to a shareholder’s question about Berkshire’s massive cash pile, which grew to $347 billion in Q1. He reiterated what he said in his annual letter, which was that his preference is not to be sitting in so much cash. But he made clear that holding cash was smarter than making brash acquisitions.

"We would rather have conditions that have developed where we would have like $50 billion or something like that," he said. "But that just isn’t the way the business works."

Buffett explained if he acquired businesses or accumulated stock solely for the sake of getting that cash pile down to $50 billion, "That would be the dumbest thing in the world to invest in that manner."

For now, Buffett believes it’s better to keep dry powder for when Berkshire could be "bombarded with offerings" that offer better risk-reward opportunities than what he’s seeing today.

"We have made a lot of money by not wanting to be fully invested at all times," he said.

Of course, this strategy is not for everyone. Buffett and Berkshire are in the business of acquiring companies and picking stocks. In fact, Buffett has historically recommended most people to invest in passively managed S&P 500 index funds.

"We don’t think it’s improper for people who are passive investors to just make a few simple investments and sit for their life in them," he said. "But we’ve made the decision to be in this business. So we think we can do a little better than that."

A shareholder asked Buffett specifically about the market swings we experienced in the past month.

"What has happened in the last 30, 45 days, 100 days … it’s really nothing," he said. "This is not a huge move. … This has not been a dramatic bear market or anything of the sort."

Indeed, you can get smoked in the short-term. It’s one of the truths about the stock market.