Warren Buffett on Saturday used the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway Inc to rail against Wall Street excess and extol the virtues of cash after rapidly spending tens of billions on stocks and companies, while addressing the risk to his conglomerate from the threat of nuclear war.

The meeting in downtown Omaha, Nebraska was Berkshire’s first welcoming shareholders since 2019, before COVID-19 derailed America’s largest corporate gathering for two years. It allowed shareholders to ask questions directly to Buffett and Berkshire Vice Chairmen Charlie Munger, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain.

Buffett’s comments came after Berkshire, long criticized for keeping too much idle cash, revealed it had scooped up more than $51 billion of stocks in the first quarter, including a much larger stake in Chevron Corp.

Berkshire also said first-quarter operating profit was little changed, as many of its dozens of businesses withstood supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 variants and the Ukraine invasion. – Reuters