This Top Warren Buffett Holding Could Outperform the S&P 500 in the Second Half of 2025, According to Certain Wall Street Analysts

Globe and Mail

19 hours ago

Warren Buffett is widely regarded as one of the greatest investors of all time. He has a public track record of over 70 years to back that up, generating massive market-trouncing returns over that time.
His company, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) has continued to outperform the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) in 2025. That's despite the fact that Buffett's retirement announcement in May has somewhat deflated the premium investors are willing to pay for shares. That speaks to the strength of Buffett's portfolio of investments, including owned and operated businesses, marketable equities, private issues, and bonds.
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While Buffett expects everything his company buys to outperform over the long run (why else would he buy it?), one of Berkshire's biggest holdings looks particularly well-positioned to do so in the near term. That's backed up by analysis from Morgan Stanley 's team of market analysts led by Lisa Shalett.
Here's the Buffett investment that could outperform over the rest of the year.
Buffett's selling many of his top stocks
It's worth pointing out that Buffett has had a hard time identifying great opportunities in the stock market recently. Not only that, but he's consistently sold many of Berkshire's biggest marketable equity holdings, including Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), and Citigroup (NYSE: C).
That said, Buffett hasn't said that he sees significant challenges developing at any of those companies. Apple notably remains Berkshire's largest marketable equity holding, accounting for about 21% of the portfolio. Bank of America remains third in line with more than 10% of the $283 billion portfolio invested in the bank stock. Buffett did cut Citi entirely, though.
The challenge for Buffett in holding those stocks appears to be a matter of valuation. Apple's price-to-earnings ratio when Buffett made Berkshire's initial investment in the stock was between 10 and 11.3. Today, it trades for 31 times trailing earnings, and it consistently traded higher throughout the second half of last year.
When it comes to bank stocks, Buffett has mentioned that the new accounting rules requiring banks to mark assets to market make it difficult to assess the financial reality of their balance sheets. As a result, he's less comfortable holding companies like Citi, and he's slowly selling off harder-to-value financial stocks.
It's not just those three that Buffett's been selling. In fact, Berkshire's been a net seller of stocks for 10 straight quarters. Total sales during that period add up to more than $174 billion in excess of Berkshire's stock purchases. While some of that cash went toward paying a record corporate tax bill last year, the vast majority has gone into a single investment vehicle: short-term U.S. Treasury bills.
Berkshire Hathaway held over $314 billion of U.S. Treasury bills as of the end of the first quarter. Morgan Stanley analysts think that's a smart place to stash cash in the current financial market environment. In fact, they think there's a good chance T-bills outperform the S&P 500 through the end of the year.
An extremely low-risk bet to beat the market
One of the biggest reasons analysts think government bonds offer a better investment than the S&P 500 right now is that the premium investors get for taking on the risk of equities is extremely low. Shalett and her team say the equity-risk premium sits near a 20-year low.
With the earnings yield (the inverse of the price-to-earnings ratio) on the S&P 500 sitting around 4.7%, that's not a lot higher than the 4.3% investors can receive on 10-year Treasuries. One-month to six-month yields also range between 4.1% and 4.3% as of June 25. Meanwhile, there seems to be a lot of risk involved with buying equities right now, considering the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and unpredictable U.S. trade policies.
Further supporting the short-term value of Treasury bills are proposed regulatory changes, says Shalett. The Federal Reserve proposed adjusting the supplementary leverage ratio for banks. If banks can take on more Treasury bills on their balance sheets, it should support a higher debt ceiling without a rise in interest rates (thus supporting the value of current bond issues). Additionally, the Genius Act supports the creation and issuance of stablecoins, which are typically backed by U.S. Treasuries, adding more bidders to the auction.
But it's important for investors to keep in mind that these are short-term factors. The equity risk premium is unlikely to stay this low for very long, especially if the above factors and the Fed's plans to eventually lower the Fed Funds Rate push yields lower over time. Despite the fact that Buffett has more money in Treasuries than marketable equities right now, he'd still prefer Berkshire's money to go into stocks. "Berkshire shareholders can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities," Buffett wrote in his 2024 letter to shareholders.
The challenge for investors is finding good value in the current market. That's an even bigger challenge for Buffett, who's not very interested in opportunities where he can only invest a few billion dollars. The good news for smaller investors is that small- and mid-cap stocks trade at much more attractive valuations than large-cap stocks. So, while the large-cap S&P 500 index doesn't look that attractive right now, there are plenty of opportunities among smaller companies.
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Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Adam Levy has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Bank of America, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.