However, this isn't to say that Buffett and his stock pickers aren't buying any stocks. In fact, there's one company whose stock Berkshire has continued to buy, and it recently bought even more. Image source: The Motley Fool.

And Berkshire’s record since Buffett took over speaks for itself: in the time since he took control through to the end of last year, Berkshire had outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 5mn percentage points. Buffett famously sat out the dotcom rush of the late 1990s, a move that was vindicated when it emerged that the boom was actually a bubble.

Berkshire Hathaway reported a 3.79% decline in second-quarter earnings as CEO Warren Buffett's company warned about President Donald Trump's tariffs on imported goods.