The investing world’s north star is beginning to dim.
Warren Buffett has handed over the CEO reins to Greg Abel after a six-decade run that turned an unremarkable textile company into one of the most powerful compounding engines in market history, leaving investors grappling with how singular that achievement really was, even as he remains chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
When Buffett took control of Berkshire in the mid-1960s, its shares traded around $19. By the end of 2025, a single Class A share was worth over $750,000.
From 1964 — the year before Buffett took control of Berkshire — to 2024, the one-of-a-kind conglomerate delivered a compounded annual gain of 19.9%, nearly double the S&P 500
′s 10.4%, resulting in an overall return of more than 5.5 million percent, according to the company’s latest annual report. The shares added another 10% to that return in 2025.
