It will be hard to bet against Warren Buffett/BH... If only because of the fact that he's a big stack bully, to use the poker terminology.
What's crazier is that when he touts that number it's BRK book value which is after corporate taxes are paid. SPX returns are pre-tax (or at best tax deferred).
What is crazier is accepting wrong figures as right (not 20% : 16% per year vs 9.5% for the S&P). Actually, Bill Gates did quite better. As an 100% owner of MSFT stocks at the same time, he was up +24% per year during the last 30 years (or +84 000 % compounded). But Bill Gates never said he was a financial genius. CM
This is correct... it's no surprise that his buddy Obama quashed the Keystone...after all - how would that help Buffett's railroad investment?
Buffet was the laughing stock of the town in the late 1990's amongst gunslinger traders making a killing. His poster investment at the time was KO (Coke) during the internet boom. What an idiot , as Infoseek and CMGI and their like were in play.
If you bought BH 50 years ago, it's return compounds at an annual rate of 21.6%: http://fortune.com/2015/02/28/berkshire-after-50-years/ If you own it since the mid 80s, one A share costed ~$2,000 then and is ~$217,000 now. If you were stupid and bought it just before the crash in 2007 @ $~150,000 peak, all time high, you are still ahead today @ ~$217,000. I don't know how he did it but there are few others who can claim these numbers.
Ok but : 1 Money making was easy between 1950 and 1970 : you can't consider these figures. 2 Lobbying is not trading (Keystone decision thx to Obama=> what a joke). http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/warren_buffett_and_the_keystone_decision.html 3 He made big noob mistakes in 2007 / 2008 and is doing the same NOW. 4 Lot of traders were quite much better (Dennis Richard, Michael Marcus, Marty Schwartz, Larry Williams) without cheating, lying, lobbying. 5 Generally, self-proclaimed Gurus end bad (Bill Gross, Bill Miller, Nouriel Roubini, Abby Joseph Cohen...). CM
If it is so easy, name a few more investors who did as well or better than his track record back between 1950 and 1970. Not trying to argue or debate, so this is the end of my comments. Peace.