For Warren Buffett, the cash option is priceless

Found via My Investing Notebook.

If holding cash in your portfolio for little return is driving you crazy, maybe it’s time to look at it the way Warren Buffett does.

Mr. Buffett, the world’s most successful (and richest) value investor, is sitting on almost $41-billion (U.S.) of cash at his Berkshire Hathaway holding company, the most in a year. Partly, that heap of greenbacks is a safety blanket. But it’s something more. As with most matters Buffett, the strategy is more complicated than it looks, Alice Schroeder says.

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“He thinks of cash differently than conventional investors,” Ms. Schroeder says. “This is one of the most important things I learned from him: the optionality of cash. He thinks of cash as a call option with no expiration date, an option on every asset class, with no strike price.”