- Berkshire Hathaway increased its stakes in Japan’s five biggest trading houses, according to a regulatory disclosure published on Monday. The investment comes as the U.S. stock market has endured a major selloff, though analysts doubt asset prices are low enough for Warren Buffett to start deploying his immense cash pile for a big purchase.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is investing more money in Japan amid the recent selloff in the U.S. stock market.
The conglomerate increased its holdings in Japan’s five biggest trading houses, according to Japanese regulatory filings published on Monday.
Berkshire grew its stake in Mitsui to 9.82% from 8.09%, in Mitsubishi to 9.67% from 8.31%, in Marubeni to 9.3% from 8.3%, in Sumitomu to 9.29% from 8.23%, and in Itochu to 8.53% from 7.47%.
Buffett has likened them to them to Berkshire itself, noting they have a diverse array of investments at home and abroad.
Berkshire began building positions in the sogo shosha in 2019 and recently reached an agreement with them to gradually go beyond an earlier 10% cap on its stakes. At the end of 2024, the market value of Berkshire’s holdings in the firms totaled $23.5 billion.
In his annual letter to shareholders last month, Buffett said that “our admiration for these companies has consistently grown,” citing appropriate dividend hikes, sensible share buybacks, and compensation for top managers that’s “far less aggressive” compared to the US.
“I expect that Greg [Abel] and his eventual successors will be holding this Japanese position for many decades and that Berkshire will find other ways to work productively with the five companies in the future,” Buffett added, referring to his designated replacement as CEO.
While the additional Japanese investments were disclosed on Monday, the exact timing of the transactions is unclear, though the annual letter in late February telegraphed what was coming.
The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In contrast, Berkshire sold a net $134 billion in equities in 2024, ending the year with a cash pile of $334.2 billion—nearly double from a year ago and more than its shrinking stock portfolio of $272 billion.
Meanwhile, U.S. stocks began nose-diving in mid-February after President Donald Trump began imposing tariffs; he has since continued rolling out more. So far, he has hit China, Canada, Mexico, steel, and aluminum with higher duties, and reciprocal tariffs are due April 2.
The Nasdaq has tumbled into correction territory, and the S&P 500 also passed the correction threshold last week but soon pared its decline to less than 10% from its peak.
That’s left investors wondering if Buffett will finally make a major purchase of stock or clinch a mega-deal for a company after complaining for years that valuations have been too high.
But analysts told Fortune earlier that a big splash is still unlikely as valuations haven’t gone down far enough, noting that Buffett usually prefers to be patient.
“He has no interest in timing the market’s bottom, nor does he chase short-term rebounds,” Armando Gonzalez, founder of AI-powered research platform Bigdata.com, said. “Instead, he waits for moments when fear drives prices to levels where the risk-reward equation tilts decisively in his favor.”
