Buffett: ‘Tough to find value’ when everyone is gambling

Warren Buffett is back on the tape, and the message is the same one Berkshire has been signaling with its cash pile for months. Buffett was critical of a stock market that he said is increasingly driven by speculative trading, as opposed to investing for the long term, telling CNBC’s Becky Quick that “it’s tough to find values when everybody is preferring gambling.”

What Buffett actually said

Buffett appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on July 15 and said he is not finding much to buy, with the 95-year-old Berkshire Executive Chairman comparing the current cycle to something he has been warning about for decades.

“There are times when opportunities are just thrown at you so fast you can’t, you know, it’s unbelievable. There’s other times when you’re very, very lucky if you find one thing in a couple of years. And it should always be that the latter is what prevails.”

In May, he likened the market to “a church with a casino attached,” specifically calling out the surge in one-day options trading as “gambling.”

The cash pile tells the story

Berkshire underperformed the S&P 500 in 2025, and the cash pile has kept growing, hitting a record $397 billion at the end of Q1 2026. That is not a small tell from the most watched allocator in the market.

Greg Abel net sold $8.1 billion of equity holdings in his first quarter as CEO, continuing the pattern of building cash rather than deploying it. Translation: the new regime is not chasing this tape either.

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Where the ‘gambling’ is showing up

The stock market has reached all-time highs this year despite challenges including an energy shock from an ongoing war with Iran, with critics pointing to speculation in stocks related to artificial intelligence, plus options and leveraged ETFs contributing to market activity.

Retail traders have been purchasing shares of memory chipmaker Micron and recent IPO SpaceX. Those are the flow hotspots Buffett is implicitly pointing at when he talks about cultivating gamblers instead of investors.

The one exception

Buffett did reveal on July 15 that he personally initiated Berkshire’s investment in Alphabet, which the company first disclosed in Q3 2025 and has since expanded, including participating in a $10 billion private placement to fund Alphabet’s AI infrastructure — but that’s one position.

In the first quarter, Berkshire took new positions in Delta Air Lines, Alphabet and Macy’s, and also sold off many old positions, taking the overall investment portfolio from 42 positions to 29. The book is getting more concentrated, not more aggressive.

Options market and stocks to watch

Watch BRK.B for how the market digests a Buffett who is openly saying he cannot find value while sitting on a record cash balance — any deployment headline would be a catalyst.

Watch GOOGL as the one name Buffett personally endorsed, with Berkshire’s participation in the AI infrastructure private placement now public.

Watch MU and the AI-adjacent names flagged as speculative hotspots, where 0DTE and leveraged ETF flow has been most concentrated.

Watch HOOD, given Buffett’s long-standing view that “Robinhood has become a very significant part of the casino aspect of the casino group that has joined into the stock market” — the platform is a direct proxy for the retail gambling behavior he is calling out.

Watch SPY for whether momentum keeps pushing highs against Buffett’s caution, or whether his discipline gets validated later in the year. For more, see other news.

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