💰 The Game Buffett Won Is Gone

THE MAIN EVENTThe Game Buffett Won Is Gone ⏳

At 96, Warren Buffett has officially stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, with his son Howard taking over the role.

“Father Time always wins,” he wrote to shareholders. “He has, however, been generous with me.”

Buffett made excellent use of that time.

From 1965 through 2025, Berkshire stock compounded at 19.7% a year, nearly double the S&P 500’s 10.5%. A dollar in Berkshire became about $61,000. A dollar in the index became $462.

For investors hoping to learn from that record, though, the headline number needs some context.

An Edge That Faded 📉

Here’s Berkshire’s annualized return vs. the S&P 500, decade by decade, according to its latest shareholder letter:

• 1976 to 1985: 50.7% vs. 14.1%

• 1986 to 1995: 29.2% vs. 14.9%

• 1996 to 2005: 10.7% vs. 9.1%

• 2006 to 2015: 8.3% vs. 7.3%

• 2016 to 2025: 14.3% vs. 14.8%

The greatest stock picker in history spent his last decade as CEO with Berkshire slightly behind the S&P 500.

That shrinking gap says less about Buffett losing his touch than it does about the conditions around him.

What Changed 🔓

As Berkshire and the market matured, some of his biggest advantages became much harder to use.

1) Small money.

In 1999, Buffett said he could make 50% a year on $1 million because “it’s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money.”

A small investor can build a meaningful position in a tiny, overlooked company without attracting much attention. Berkshire is now a $1 trillion company holding $360 billion in cash and Treasury bills. It needs multibillion-dollar opportunities to make a noticeable difference.

Trying to invest that much can push the price higher before Berkshire finishes buying. Meanwhile, even a spectacular small investment barely moves the needle. Greg Abel captured the problem in his first shareholder letter as CEO. After describing one promising acquisition, he wrote: “We only wish it had been ten times bigger.”

2) Unequal information.

When Buffett started, company filings lived on paper, and executives could quietly brief favored analysts before informing everyone else.

Filings became freely available online in the mid-1990s. In 2000, the SEC’s Regulation FD restricted companies from privately sharing material information with select analysts and investors.

Today, all public filings are available to you and a hedge fund at the same time. When thousands of investors and algorithms are studying the same information, finding a mispriced stock gets much harder.

What You Can Still Copy ✍️

Two of Buffett’s most valuable habits never depended on privileged information or a small balance sheet.

1) Keep score.

Berkshire’s shareholder letter compares the company with the S&P 500 for every year since 1965. It is an unusually honest habit.

Stock pickers can easily remember their winners while blurring the overall record. When researchers tracked 66,465 brokerage households from 1991 to 1996, the most active traders earned 11.4% a year while the market earned 17.9%.

If you pick stocks, compare your results with the S&P 500 after fees and taxes. If you consistently trail over a full market cycle while taking more risk, believe the scoreboard.

Buffett did. His instructions for money left to his wife call for 90% to be invested in a low-cost S&P 500 index fund.

2) Outwait everyone.

Information is free now. Patience isn’t.

Berkshire paid $1.3 billion for its Coca-Cola stake by 1994. At Coca-Cola’s current dividend rate, that investment now produces roughly $848 million every year without Berkshire selling a share.

The lesson isn’t that Buffett found a new Coca-Cola every year. It’s that he gave his best decisions decades to work.

Before buying anything, write down how long you plan to hold it and what would make you sell. That pause can prevent plenty of expensive activity later.

Buffett’s record may never be repeated. But he leaves investors with more than a number to admire. He leaves a discipline to borrow: keep an honest scorecard, make fewer decisions, and give the good ones time.

MARKET MOODMeta Found Its Muse 🎨

Winners

Vicor

$VICR  ·  Cap $12.7B  ·  Week to date ▲ 24.0%
Vicor makes the power modules that feed electricity to AI chips. After licensing its patents to another big AI hardware maker, it said sales this quarter should grow more than 20% from last quarter. The stock jumped almost as much the next day.

Meta Platforms

$META  ·  Cap $1.98T  ·  Week to date ▲ 16.8%
Meta's AI assistant Muse passed ChatGPT as the No. 1 free app in the App Store, adding about $285 billion to Meta's value. Zuckerberg explained that Meta expects to profit by taking a small fee from transactions.

Warner Bros. Discovery

$WBD  ·  Cap $77.4B  ·  Week to date ▲ 10.9%
On Monday, 12 states settled their antitrust suit against Paramount's $31-a-share cash takeover of Warner. The settlement requires Paramount to release at least 30 films a year. Warner shares now sit just a few cents under the buyout price, the market's way of saying it expects the deal to close.

Losers

Valero Energy

$VLO  ·  Cap $110.2B  ·  Week to date ▼ 7.3%
With diesel at a record $6.52 a gallon, President Trump said Tuesday, "let's not send out the diesel." A Wednesday report said the White House was weighing a 90-day export ban. A ban would force Valero to sell its diesel at home, where more supply would push prices down.

NextEra Energy

$NEE  ·  Cap $157.7B  ·  Week to date ▼ 6.0%
NextEra, owner of Florida Power & Light, fell with its sector after the 10-year Treasury yield topped 5.1% Wednesday, its highest since 2007. Utilities borrow heavily to build power plants, and their dividends compete with bonds for income investors, so rising rates hit them twice.

Oracle

$ORCL  ·  Cap $421.9B  ·  Week to date ▼ 5.5%
Oracle sent the developer of a Stargate data center it's leasing a force majeure notice. That legal warning could let Oracle delay payments if events outside its control make the site miss its 2028 opening. Oracle claims it's still on schedule.

FAST FACTSClaims, Condos, And Cruise Ships 🚢

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📺 Disney+ And Hulu Just Got Pricier: The ad-free Premium plans rise 13% to $21.49 a month starting on the next bill. [Read]

THE ODDSBubble? What Bubble? 🎲

CHART OF THE WEEKHigher Base, Same Slope 📉

For 23 years, the stuff you bought was getting cheaper. From 1997 to 2020, prices for cars, furniture, and electronics fell about 0.9% a year.

Then COVID hit, and they jumped more than 20% in two years.

Here's the surprising part. Since peaking in 2022, they've gone back to falling about 1.1% a year, almost exactly the old pace.

The trend is back. It just restarted from a higher base.

Why didn't prices come back down? Because the costs underneath them didn't either.

• Pay for rank-and-file workers is up 36% since early 2020.

• Import prices for goods other than food and fuel are up 17% since then.

• The Fed targets the pace of inflation, not the prices we got used to, so nothing pulls them back down.

Electronics never stopped getting cheaper. By the government's quality-adjusted measure, TVs cost 29% less than in early 2020, and phones 57% less.

The holdout is new cars, which haven't gotten any cheaper since 2023. And tariffs helped make 2025 the only year since 2022 that this stuff got more expensive.

WORDS TO REMEMBERThere’s Safety In Numbers 🧠