Earlier this month, Warren Buffett sent his last letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway and officially retired as CEO. Over the last 60 years he has become one of the wealthiest people to ever live and is widely regarded as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – investors ever. This is perhaps something that is up for debate, but one thing is certain: no one can match Warren Buffett for his combination of performance AND longevity. Since 1965, when Buffett took control of Berkshire, the stock has returned approximately 20% per year for 60 years. The total cumulative return is approximately 5,098,000% or about 51,000 times your money.
An investment of just $1,000 in 1965 would be worth an astonishing $51,000,000 today!
This return was achieved with no dividends being paid and assumes that the person who invested never sold any of their shares. It is a testament to the power of compounding and the patience required to be a successful long-term investor. Here’s an even more astonishing number. Warren Buffett is 95 today and did not become a billionaire until he was 56. Today he is worth about $150 billion and has given away approximately $60 billion. That means he has accumulated more than 95% of his wealth AFTER he turned 56. Clearly, it is never too late to start investing but the earlier you start, the better!
One of the highlights of my career was attending the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder’s meeting in Omaha, Nebraska in 2010. It was like going to Disney World for someone like me. The highlight of the meeting was the question and answer period which was about 8 hours of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (who has since passed) answering questions from shareholders about everything from stocks to the economy. It was a true master class of investing and I will never forget the experience of being in a hockey arena with 20,000 people listening to the greatest investor explain how he invests. They spent as much time talking about their investing mistakes as they did about their investing wins. They learned more from their mistakes than all of their wins. What also struck me was what I believe is the crux of successful investing as explained by them. Investing is hard but it is also very simple. It is hard because investing is naturally emotional and the two most prevalent emotions are greed and fear. In fact, Buffett’s most famous quote about investing is “Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful”. It really is that simple. Buffett was extremely successful because he never let what was going on in the market in the short term affect his investment decisions. He never worried about corrections (other than as an opportunity to buy) or recessions or geopolitics. He treated his stocks like they were actual businesses he owned and, therefore, never thought about timing the market.
The market has performed extremely well so far in 2025. The sentiment earlier in the year was clearly negative and I suspect many investors used that as their cue to not invest and see how things played out. I used it as an opportunity to rebalance portfolio so on April 4th, I did just that. It ended up being a very good decision because on April 9th, the US market jumped 9% in one day and has been going up ever since. Be greedy when others are fearful!
I am generally quite optimistic about the markets for the rest of the year and into 2026. There are a lot of compelling investing opportunities especially in energy, healthcare and technology that I think will drive markets higher. But we should never expect it to be a straight line up and we should absolutely expect corrections to happen. Historically, at least one 10% correction per year has been the norm. Believe me, if I could predict when these are going to happen, I would be a billionaire and you would be, too!
As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.