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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
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Author: LongTermBRK ✹  😊 😞
Number: of 22353 
Subject: Re: Waiting: Then and Now
Date: 09/14/26 6:03 PM
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No. of Recommendations: 10
One note on the excess cash: it's not $360B as some state. It's more like half of that. About $180B of that cash will never be invested in stocks or whole businesses as it belongs to insurance policy holders & thererefore will be invested very, very conservatively in short term T-bills.

I agree that not all of the $360 billion is excess capital. But I don’t see how we get from ‘Berkshire needs a very large liquidity reserve’ to ‘$180 billion will never be invested in stocks or businesses.’ Stocks and businesses continue to be the insurance investments of choice here, along with the risk free treasuries .

Chris Bloomstran recently estimated roughly $100 billion is needed to support the insurance operation. So I’d call $180 billion a pretty aggressive estimate. My ballpark working assumption is same as Bloomstran. I’ve seen estimates from $75 B to $125 B...admittedly all guesses— but I think your number is very high.
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This community has written 21,861 posts about Berkshire Hathaway. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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Summary of 2Q 2026 · 55 recs · 2026
3Q Summary · 53 recs · 2024
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