Warren Buffett Returns, Berkshire Hathaway Performance & IPO Winners
Warren Buffett's returns at Berkshire Hathaway came to 1,027x after money printing over 60 years. We compare them with Walmart, Nike and other IPO winners.
Topic
Berkshire Hathaway Performance Since 1965
How well has Berkshire Hathaway really done once money printing is taken out?
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Better than almost anything else we measured. Between 1965 and 2025 the shares rose 50,981-fold while the US money supply grew about 50-fold, which still leaves a 1,027x gain in purchasing power, or 19.8% a year for 60 years.
Part IV is mostly about why. Berkshire never paid a dividend and it invested its insurance float, so nothing leaked out of the compounding, and the people who owned it didn’t have to pick a single stock themselves.
- 1,027x Berkshire Hathaway, 1965 to 2025 M2-adjusted, compounding at 19.8% a year.
- 1,024x Walmart since its 1970 listing M2-adjusted, at 21.1% a year.
- 6.1x S&P 500 total return, 1965 to 2025 M2-adjusted at 10.0% a year over the same 60 years.
Articles on Berkshire Hathaway
1 article from our research on this topic.
Plain-English definitions
Key terms for Berkshire Hathaway
- Insurance float
- Premiums an insurer holds before claims are paid out. Berkshire invested its float, which gave it a cushion and extra funds to compound.
- Dividend reinvestment
- Using each dividend to buy more of the same holding instead of spending it, so the income compounds alongside the price.
- CAGR
- Compound annual growth rate: the steady yearly rate that would turn the starting value into the ending value over the period.
- M2-adjusted value 1.0 = break-even
- An asset’s growth divided by M2 growth over the same years. Above 1.0 it gained share of the money pool, below 1.0 it lost share.
FAQ
Questions about Berkshire Hathaway
Answers drawn from the figures in our research. Educational only, not financial advice.
How has Berkshire Hathaway performed against the S&P 500?
Far better over the 60 years from 1965. The S&P 500 with dividends reinvested returned about 10% a year, or 6.1x after M2, while Berkshire compounded at 19.8% and finished at 1,027x after M2. Over the last 20 years the comparison is closer, and the series overview gives the Nasdaq the edge over that stretch.
Why did Berkshire never pay a dividend?
Part IV’s view is that it didn’t need to, and that not paying one was part of the advantage. Every penny of profit stayed inside the company to be reinvested, so there was no dividend leakage and no tax on payouts for shareholders, which let the whole sum keep compounding for six decades.
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