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
Warren Buffett’s Returns Measured Against Money Printing
Warren Buffett’s record looks just as strong after adjusting for money printing as before.
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Between 1965 and 2025 Berkshire Hathaway grew 50,981-fold while M2 grew about 50-fold, which leaves a 1,027x gain in purchasing power at a compound rate of 19.8% a year.
What interested us most in Part IV was how he did it. Berkshire never paid a dividend, so every penny of profit was reinvested inside the company, and it invested insurance float alongside it, which is why we came to see it as a hand-picked fund run by one capital allocator.
- 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 Warren Buffett
1 article from our research on this topic.
Plain-English definitions
Key terms for Warren Buffett
- 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.
- CAGR
- Compound annual growth rate: the steady yearly rate that would turn the starting value into the ending value over the period.
- Dividend reinvestment
- Using each dividend to buy more of the same holding instead of spending it, so the income compounds alongside the price.
- 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 Warren Buffett
Answers drawn from the figures in our research. Educational only, not financial advice.
How good were Warren Buffett’s returns after money printing?
Among the best we found anywhere. Berkshire’s 1,027x M2-adjusted return over 60 years is level with Walmart’s 1,024x from its 1970 listing at the top of the pre-digital list, and far ahead of the S&P 500 total return at 6.1x over the same period. The only things that beat it in our research were digital assets, which did similar or better in much less time.
Is Berkshire still the best way to compound?
We are less sure than we would have been 20 years ago. The series overview notes that Berkshire’s edge rested on one man’s judgement and that Warren Buffett is now in his nineties, and over the last 20 years the Nasdaq has done better. In our Part VI base case Berkshire only just clears the money supply hurdle by 2035, at about 1.6x in real terms.
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