Andrew Bary

There will be a lot for shareholders to celebrate when Warren Buffett marks 60 years at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway at Saturday's annual meeting in Omaha.

One of the most amazing statistics of his tenure is that Berkshire stock could fall 99% and still be ahead of the S&P 500 since Buffett took control of the company in 1965.

Berkshire's Class A shares, the original stock, finished Thursday at $795,400. If the shares were trading at 1% of the current price, or $7,954, Berkshire would have returned 10.5% annually since 1965, assuming a starting price of $20 a share.

The S&P 500 has returned 10.4% annually since 1965 including reinvested dividends, while Berkshire's stock has actually gained 19.9% a year through the end of 2024. That gap of nearly 10 percentage points shows the huge benefits to compounding a high return over a long period of time.

Our calculation was inspired by a tweet three years ago from Chris Bloomstran, the chief investment officer of Semper Augustus Investments Group. Barron's wrote about Berkshire's remarkable record at that time.

Bloomstran tweeted that Berkshire could drop 99.3% and still have a record that beats the S&P 500 since 1965. "I mentioned that to Mr. Buffett several years ago. His reply, 'Ben Graham would be proud. But let's not test the math,'" Bloomstran tweeted.

Buffett was referring to Benjamin Graham, who was his mentor, the author of The Intelligent Investor and one of the leading value investors of the 20(th) century.

Most of Berkshire's outperformance came during the first 40 years of Buffett's tenure, when Berkshire was much smaller and could generate outsize, index-topping returns. Still, the stock is ahead of the index so far in 2025 and over the past five, 10, and 20 years.

The A shares are up 17% so far this year, more than 20 percentage points ahead of the S&P 500. And the stock has gained 23.7% annually over the past five years, against a 16.4% annual return for the index. Berkshire is up 11.9% annually over the past 20 years, versus 10.3% for the S&P 500.

Buffett continues to demonstrate that size doesn't preclude outperformance even as the company tops $1 trillion in market value. That is a major achievement.