Buffett slashes Apple stake as he boosts cash to new record

American business tycoon Warren Buffett continued to slash his stake in Apple as part of a selling spree that has seen his Berkshire Hathaway dump $166bn worth of stocks over the past two years, with the Oracle of Omaha finding few other opportunities to chase in the US stock market.

The sprawling industrial and investment conglomerate disclosed on Saturday that it had reduced its position in Apple to $69.9bn in the third quarter, indicating it had shed a further 100mn shares in the three-month period.

In just over a year, Buffett has dumped almost two-thirds of his stake in the technology company, which at its peak in 2023 accounted for $178bn of the company’s stock portfolio.

The stock sales are a dramatic shift by Buffett, given in 2022 he described Apple as one of Berkshire’s “four giants”, accounting for the bulk of the company’s value.

Buffett has also been reducing Berkshire’s stake in Bank of America and over the course of the three months to September, sold $36.1bn of stocks.

He has found little else to entice him in the US stock market, buying equities worth just $1.5bn. The 94-year-old has been jettisoning stocks at a remarkable clip, with Berkshire being a net seller of equities for eight consecutive quarters.

Buffett in turn ploughed the proceeds from those sales back into short-term Treasury bills, pushing the company’s cash position to a record $325.2bn.