Berkshire Hathaway recently reported a record cash pile near $400 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2026. Earlier this month, Buffett told CNBC that it is not the ideal environment to invest Berkshire’s record cash hoard. Several market analysts explained that the rationale behind this move may be expectations of a sharper crash ahead.
Buffett also played down recent volatility in global markets, suggesting that current conditions are far from the dislocations that historically created major buying opportunities. He pointed out that Berkshire has seen far sharper drawdowns in the past, including declines of more than 50%, adding that the present environment does not warrant aggressive deployment of capital.
Michael Burry, popularly known for correctly predicting the 2008 housing crisis, remained firm on his bets against AI tech giants, triggering AI bubble worries. The analyst in a recent Substack Chat said that he sees many indicators, both technical and fundamental, lining up for the same conclusion as the Dotcom crash.
“1999 went where no market had gone before, and I would say so can this one…It is already there on a number of indicators,” he said, arguing that massive venture capital flows, rising AI debt issuance, and extreme market optimism are creating conditions where valuations may detach from economic reality.
AI boom reshuffles global market order
This comes as the AI boom coupled with the ongoing Iran-US war led to a major reshuffling of the global stock market hierarchy, with South Korea and Taiwan overtaking several long-established Western exchanges.
South Korea’s Kospi has emerged as the shining staramong all stock markets so far this year, skyrocketing to fresh lifetime highs last week while most of the global markets crashed. According to a report by The Financial Times, Kospi has surged multi fold in less than 18 months, with this bull run outpacing tech-heavy Nasdaq’s bull run in the 1990s, just before the Dotcom crash.
Despite worries, South Korea has leapfrogged the UK into eighth place, according to HSBC data tracking global equity-market capitalisation rankings, as quoted by CNBC.
Late in April this year, another Asian market boomed. Taiwan’s stock market overtook Canada’s to become the world’s sixth-largest, helped by strong investor demand for artificial intelligence-related stocks and the sharp rise in shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
Notably, Taiwan’s stock market was only the world’s twelfth largest in 2004 while South Korea ranked 13th, the report by CNBC further said, highlighting how the market order has changed over the years. Currently, the top 10 stock markets in terms of total market capitalisation, as per data by HSBC quoted by the report are as follows: US, China, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, UK and France.
While optimism around AI remains high, the report highlighted that the rally has led to an extreme concentration of capital into a handful of AI firms. TSMC alone accounts for over 40% of Taiwan’s market capitalization, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together make up a record 42.2% of South Korea’s Kospi index, the report said.
Dotcom crash
Around 25 years ago, the roughly five-year dot-com bubble burst, leaving trillions of dollars in investment losses in its wake. Between 1995 and 2000, the S&P 500 nearly tripled while the Nasdaq 100 soared 718%.
However, as the tech bubble driven by extreme enthusiasm around the internet collapsed, more than 80% of Nasdaq’s value was erased and the S&P 500 was almost cut in half by October 2002.
As global markets crashed, Indian equities were no exception. Between 2000 and 2002, the Nifty 50 tumbled roughly 51% peak-to-trough, NSE said. They however soon recovered all losses.
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