How Buffett Turned a Few Calls Into 3,787,464%
A good decision every five years provided the foundation of Berkshire Hathaway’s returns.
Warren Buffett is legendary in China too.
Photographer: GREG BAKER/AFPFew investors’ words are parsed more intently than Warren Buffett’s. But in this year’s annual shareholder letter, which dropped Saturday, the Oracle of Omaha didn’t give much away. It was one of his shortest ever and contained few fresh ideas. But he did offer one morsel: “Our satisfactory results,” he wrote, “have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years.”
By “satisfactory results,” Buffett is being modest. Shares in his investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., have returned 3,787,464% over his almost six decades at the helm. That just 12 decisions drove such performance is remarkable. Naturally, investors scrambled to identify them. For my part, the list can be narrowed down even more.