To a significant degree they have taken their own advice. At last report almost 25 percent of the Sequoia Fund was in Treasury notes and other fixed-income securities. The rest is deployed among Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., financial stocks such as Fifth Third Bancorp and a few others.

"We are confident that our economy is basically sound," [William Ruane] and [Robert Goldfarb] wrote. "We are also confident that we will find some attractive stocks to buy with our substantial cash reserve, but at the present moment we are finding little of interest."