Warren Buffett now owns more T-bills than the Federal Reserve

While he continues to publicly sing the praises of Apple as a business, Buffett has historically been fairly valuation sensitive,

Sacconaghi said in a note

In our opinion, this could be for diversification or other reasons, and does not change our view on the fundamentals of Apple,

Bank of America's Wamsi Mohan said in a note

Warren Buffettberkshire Hathaway CEO

I don’t mind at all, under current conditions, building the cash position,

Buffett said at the time

You've got a huge seller in the market that may have been in front of some of this bad news, in front of the turn in the market, in front of the bear sentiment,

Shanahan said

Warren Buffettberkshire Hathaway CEO

I would say with the president's fiscal policies, I think that something has to give. And I think that higher taxes are quite likely. And the government wants to take a greater share of your income, or mine, or Berkshire's, they can do it,

Buffett said at the annual meeting

This looks alarming because you have a large and sophisticated investor with a really impressive long-term track record not putting any of his cash to work to buy stocks, and in fact, is massively liquidating,

James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst who covers Berkshire, said in an interview

Jim Reideasygoing singer

It's still Warren Buffett's single largest position so it's possible this will just be seen as risk management,

Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank's head of global economics and thematic research, said in a note

In fact, the markets are so volatile that even the news of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway selling 50 percent of its stake in Apple was enough to raise further alarm and cause increased negative sentiment,

Leaman said

We expect Berkshire to be opportunistic in the near to intermediate term if equity market conditions deteriorate,

Seifert said

Berkshire has been steadily building cash, but the recent acceleration likely reflects a growing conservatism within the firm—evidenced by its recent high-profile portfolio moves,

Cathy Seifert, the director at CFRA Research, told Newsweek

We'd love to spend it, but we won't spend it unless we think we're doing something that has very little risk and can make us a lot of money."

Buffett spoke about the cash stockpile at the conglomerate's annual meeting in May, saying

During times of turmoil like this, it's normal for investors to seek safer alternatives. In this instance, we're seeing traders move towards bonds and gold,

she added