Poll: How did your % cash change?

Many posters seem to be on a buying spree: Berkshire, Google, Baba, Disney, whatever. I am wondering whether that’s true and whether it’s representative.

To find out please tell us how the cash part of your portfolio CHANGED, whether you have more or less cash in your portfolio now compared to the beginning of the year.

Example: If your port was $10,000 and you had $3000 cash (30%) but now, after buying some BRK.B only $2000 (20%), you would tick the second box as the best approximation for your cash being down now 1/3 = 33%.
(Asking for a bit of calculation should not be too demanding for Berkshire shareholders :slight_smile:

.

  • =50% less cash

  • 25% less cash
  • Roughly unchanged
  • 25% more cash
  • =50% more cash

0 voters

Interesting that we have some many on the sidelines. I, for one, was toward the top of the list as I had planned a bit of deployment this year anyway and recent prices have accelerated my own purchasing.

I’m sure I’m early but…

Interesting for me is that the poll’s result up to now does NOT seem to be trivial (as is the case with most polls), is not simply what one would expect from the posts (“Unchanged” or - thanks to buying - “less cash”).

That although nobody said so in a post apparently there are quite some here who seem to have rather “deinvested” (Me too, having rather more sold than bought as I have a few % more cash now and am waiting - but thought I am alone in that).

It didn’t specify the timeframe but since January 1st my cash position has dropped from 10% to 3% of my portfolio value (and to be fair the portfolio value itself is down roughly 10%; so yes I have been deploying some cash (including to BRK!).

Note: At 3% my cash position is the lowest its been in a long time (in percentage terms - primarily because my portfolio has grown so much that my cash savings haven’t been able to keep up! - and since I am still in accumulation mode I don’t typically sell for the purpose of raising cash).

tecmo

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Cash is higher by percentage. Haven’t sold more stock, but was already cash heavy and the value of the stocks held decreased. This along with the sale of a rental property has us significantly cash heavy.

I have a limit order in for the first 1/4 of what I intend to invest in BRK. Should put the second one in in case it ramps down faster than anticipated, and I am off playing at the time rather than glued to the screens.

IP

I’ve been very cash heavy since Dec 2019. In addition to new equity purchases (more GOOG, more BRK, and new positions in CSCO, AMZN, CMCSA, SSD, SNOW, and probably 1 or 2 others I’m forgetting), I also moved about half of the cash that was snoozing away in money market accounts into short-term (mostly 1 year or less) CDs and Treasuries paying about 10x more than the MM’s 0.3%. That still leaves a fair bit of cash on hand for the summer clearance sale.

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I’ve been very cash heavy since Dec 2019. In addition to new equity purchases (more GOOG, more BRK, and new positions in CSCO, AMZN, CMCSA, SSD, SNOW, and probably 1 or 2 others I’m forgetting), I also moved about half of the cash that was snoozing away in money market accounts into short-term (mostly 1 year or less) CDs and Treasuries paying about 10x more than the MM’s 0.3%. That still leaves a fair bit of cash on hand for the summer clearance sale.

Interesting. In the last couple of months I’ve put about 10% of the cash I have allocated for self-directed investing to work in almost the same way you did - shorter maturity CDs, BRK.B, CSCO, and SNOW. I also picked up NET and DDOG in the tech selloff and some TFC, JCI, and INTC for yield. I fear better opportunities are ahead. SSD?

Early in the year I was holding more cash than normal, in part due to some BRK selling. The cash is now basically all tied up(voted option 1), and a decent amount is now in BRK LEAPs as well (in that sense I’ve effectively tied up more than 100% of the free cash I was holding).

I’m also shaking the pillows to get any dollar I can into BRK and one or two more ideas.

Zero hesitation. No real idea what the market will do, or what BRK will do, short term, but BRK looked to me like a screaming deal any way I sliced it. So I used up all the cash I had and then some.

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Summary:

  • 1/3rd has less cash (than at beginning of the year)
  • 1/3rd has unchanged cash
  • 1/4th has more cash

I made the mistake not to add a sentence like “Excluding changes caused by extraneous events” in the text of the poll (Plus: house sale, savings etc. Minus: Buying house/car etc.).

Assuming it was clear for most that it was about changes in cash caused by activities within the portfolio it seems many here were not buying but rather selling during the last 1/2 year.

At first glance to be expected as it was a bear market, so with people rather selling than buying. On the other hand we are (yes, arrogance) a special group and I expected the opposite (especially after all that talk about how great bargains Berkshire and Mr.Google supposedly are now).

It might be a sign that many here are expecting even better prices.

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SSD?

Yeah. I mentioned it a month or so ago here. Solidly run company with steady gains over econ/housing cycles. Competes (somewhat) with a BRK subsidiary (MiTek). I’m a sucker for shares of under-covered, well run, reliably earning, boring companies selling at good prices. Carlisle (CSL) is another, although at the moment it’s still a bit over the price I’d pay.

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