Warren Buffett told CNBC that Berkshire Hathaway has $90 billion in cash, and he’s looking to “buy a big business.” “I hate cash,” Buffett said in an interview that aired Friday on “Squawk Box,” one day before Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. But the very fact that interest rates are that low makes it hard for us to buy other things because other people buy things with borrowed money, and borrowed money is so cheap.” He added: “If we are competing with equity money against slim equ

The Federal Reserve should be prepared to undertake a fresh bond-buying program if the economy again faces shock or recession, three Fed officials said on Friday at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Boston Federal Reserve Bank President Eric Rosengren went the farthest in defending what was a controversial tool in the U.S. central bank’s fight against the Great Recession, saying it is “inevitable” that the Fed will again need to engage in quantitative easing. St. Louis Fed President

Political relations between the United States and China may be rocky these days, but some U.S. political leaders are actively courting investment from the world’s No. And on the Chinese side, many companies would like a piece of President Donald Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure proposal. The United States affords that opportunity. There is tremendous infrastructure need in this country,” Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin said during an international finance and infrastructure cooperation forum in N

The hotel industry in the United States is going after travel websites like Expedia and Priceline, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. The American Hotel & Lodging Association, which counts Marriott and Hyatt as members, believes that the booking companies are monopolistic, and is looking to lobby against them. Sarah Gavin, vice president of communications at Expedia, told CNBC that the company plays “a small part” in the travel market. As of Friday’s close, shares of Expedia are up nearly

The NYSE floated an unusual investment vehicle Friday that, in a way, is a bet on lower oil prices. The company is TPG Pace Energy Holdings, and the investment is a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company). A SPAC is what is called a “blank check company” — essentially a blind pool of money that is going public. This is the first SPAC ever listed on the main NYSE market, according to the exchange. An NYSE official told me that they revised the rules of the main NYSE market last year to make th

Apple could use its massive cash hoard to buy Netflix or one of six other major U.S. companies, to the benefit of shareholders, according to a Citigroup analysis. Each target confers some strategic benefit to Apple,” Suva said. Investors in Apple could see as much as a 20 percent gain from an Apple acquisition of Disney, or 7 percent from a purchase of Tesla or Netflix, Suva said. “Like Apple, Netflix is global, has no non-core assets (like Disney) and is disrupting the global video ecosystem. T

A Snapchat patent application shows off one idea for displaying smoother augmented reality images while using less processing power: build a giant is, detect where a user is looking, and insert digital objects that you’ve pre-placed to look good. The application, published yesterday but filed in late 2015, could apply to either a phone-based app or to augmented reality glasses. In the process it covers, Snapchat would first pinpoint a user’s approximate location with GPS or a similar system. The

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and the co-author of her latest book spoke in San Francisco this week to deliver some practical advice to people who are hurting — or know others who are. The gathering came two years after the sudden death of her husband, David Goldberg. She wrote a book with Grant about how she dealt with the loss, called “Option B,” and was in San Francisco to promote it. The book grew out of conversations that Grant and Sandberg had in the wake of her tragedy and was supported by

Persistent weakness in oil prices, however, could send the energy shares and earnings reeling, as it did in the early part of 2016. Bell said first-quarter 2016 earnings growth totaled negative 6.7 percent when including the energy sector. Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones, said investors are paying attention to the fall in oil prices, but not as it relates to earnings. “Sometimes falling oil prices are indicative of global demand which could lead to a slowdown in economic growth

Job creation in April bounced back from a disappointing March, with nonfarm payrolls growing by 211,000 while the unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent, its lowest since May 2007. Economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting payroll growth of 185,000 and the headline jobless rate to tick up one-tenth to 4.6 percent. Market experts believe the report likely cements an imminent interest rate hike. The unemployment rate dropped even as the labor force participation rate edged lower to 62.9 per

Billionaire peers Bill Gates and Stanley Druckenmiller both warned Warren Buffett in 2015 he would be wrong on IBM. “I was wrong … IBM is a big strong company, but they’ve got big strong competitors too,” Buffett told CNBC. One of Buffett’s closest friends, Gates, predicted IBM’s troubles in May 2015 during an interview with the Financial Times:”IBM became less of a technology company. In similar fashion, billionaire investor Druckenmiller revealed in November 2015 he was short IBM because of cl

Each year Lego creates more than 40 products and buildable figures for every one of its licenses. With its legions of fans, “Star Wars” ranks among Lego’s top five licenses. While Lego declined to provide specific detail about Star Wars sales, across the industry, more than $760 million worth of Star Wars toys were sold last year, topping 2015 sales by $60 million, according to the NPD Group. Rob Johnson, a business and marketing manager at Lego, who has been with the company since 1988, shared

Both states currently mandate that individual health plans sold in the states cover abortion services. And that would mean that California and New York residents — men as well as women — would “have to pay thousands of dollars extra” for individual health plans because “they would lose that tax credit,” Sonfield said. However, Obamacare lets states decide whether to ban plans that offer abortion coverage from being sold on government-run insurance exchanges. Twenty-five states had decided to ban

The “Hindenburg Omen,” an obscure indicator that pops up every few years and gets Wall Street traders chattering about a possible market crash, was triggered this week. And the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 are both above their 50-day moving averages, confirming the Hindenburg at the NYSE and Nasdaq, respectively. The indicator has successfully predicted a meaningful pullback less than 30 percent of the time, according to The Wall Street Journal. But Chris Kimble, founder of Kimble Charting Solutio

U.S. corporations have been tapping the corporate debt market at a record pace, as the era of super-low rates potentially hits its twilight phase. Duensing said there’s an estimated $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion in offshore profits, but $1 trillion is considered liquid and invested in short-term holdings. UBS equity strategist Julian Emanuel, in a recent report, analyzed the overseas profits and holdings of U.S. companies, based on their year-end filings. How much of their overseas cash would be

Damodaran was responding to the point another prominent finance professor, Robert Shiller of Yale, made on the show the week prior. Damodaran, known as a foremost expert on corporate finance and valuation, doesn’t quite see things that way. But the part that I don’t get is, how is diversification going to protect you if there’s a market crash?” If we [in the U.S.] are going to crash, we’re all going to crash. “I have never been able to make that prediction solidly enough to reallocate my portfol

France’s $2.4 trillion economy is the sixth-largest in the world and vital to the continued viability of the European Union. The Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA) is above $6 billion this year as well. The much smaller, iShares MSCI France ETF (EWQ) is up 14.6 percent this year and 18.5 percent in the past year. “The European Union can survive without Britain, but not without France. If Le Pen wins, markets around the world would start pricing in Frexit risks.”

Saudi Arabia is Trump’s first stop on his maiden international trip, a sign of his intent to reinforce ties with a top regional ally. The United States has been the main supplier for most Saudi military needs, from F-15 fighter jets to command and control systems worth tens of billions of dollars in recent years. Flurry of ActivityOne of the people with knowledge of the sales said that as planning for Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia intensified in recent weeks, the arms negotiations also accelerate

The decision by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to sell about a third of its IBM shares is a major slap, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday. “I think it’s devastating for IBM. IBM spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Warren really wanted. (They) felt what he really wanted was return of cash and buy back stock. I think to some degree, a return of cash and buy back stock has constrained that company,” Cramer said on “Squawk Box.”

How is it that so many private equity investors — known for having some of the smartest minds in finance — missed the impending degradation of the sector? While the bankruptcies of some retailers have cost private equity firms millions, in aggregate, the industry’s retail investments have been positive. Between 1997 and 2014, pooled gross returns for private equity investments in the retail sector have never been negative, according to data compiled by Cambridge Associates, an investment firm. T