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If You Invested $10K in Berkshire Hathaway When Warren Buffett Took It Over, Here’s How Rich You’d Be Now

May 12, 2025

4 min Read

Written by John Csiszar

Edited by Jenna Klaverweiden

Warren Buffett Chairman and Ceo of Berkshire Hathaway Testifies About the Estate Tax Often Called the Death Tax

©Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA / Shutterstock

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The investment world shook a bit on May 3, 2025, when legendary investor Warren Buffett announced he was stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Ever since he took over the company in 1965, Buffett has been the poster child of value investing, posting extraordinary returns that dwarfed those of the S&P 500.

Now that the 94-year-old Buffett is stepping away from the limelight, it’s a great time to take a look at just how impressive those returns have been. Here’s how much you’d have in your account now if you had invested just $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway during Buffett’s tenure.

Also see why Berkshire Hathaway bought over $73 million shares of this tech company.

Overall Returns vs. S&P 500

There’s no way to look at Berkshire Hathaway’s returns over the past 60 years and be anything but astonished. According to the company’s 2024 annual report, the company provided compound returns of 19.9% per year from 1965 to 2024, which is more than double the S&P 500’s 10.4% return over the same time period.

Not impressive enough? On an absolute basis, that translates to a 5,502,284% total return through 2024, versus the S&P 500’s comparatively meager 39,054%, per the report. Considering the S&P 500 is generally considered the benchmark that professional money managers try — and typically fail — to beat over time, that performance gap is nothing short of incredible.

Here’s another incredible statistic regarding Berkshire’s performance. According to Barron’s, even if Berkshire shares fell by 99%, from $795,400 (as of May 2) to $7,954, it would still have outperformed the S&P 500 since 1965, by a 10.5% to 10.4% margin.

Growth of $10,000 Through 2024

So what does all this outperformance translate to in terms of dollars and cents?

If you had invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, by the end of 2024, you would have had about $550 million.

At that rate, even a 4% high-yield savings account would provide you with $22 million in interest income per year on that amount of money. However, it’s not likely that many of Berkshire’s long-term shareholders would liquidate their stock and move it to a savings account.

Berkshire Hathaway in 2025

In the early 2020s, some naysayers came out of the woods and put out reports showing how Buffett and Berkshire were no longer consistently outperforming the S&P 500. Indeed, Buffett himself has repeatedly said that Berkshire’s immense size makes it more difficult to invest in companies that could “move the needle” in terms of performance. Yet, to paraphrase the famous Mark Twain quote, the rumors of Buffett’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

As of May 7, 2025 — even after a sizable dip on the news of Buffett’s retirement — Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares are up 15.2% versus the S&P 500’s loss of 4.04%. For investors who held their original $10,000 position since 1965, their $550 million would have grown another $83.6 million, to $633.6 million. That’s a far greater return than those shareholders would have achieved in a savings account.

What Does the Future Hold?

Buffett’s departure, while not entirely unexpected for a 94-year-old CEO, did ruffle a few feathers on Wall Street, with the stock dropping 5% the Monday after the weekend announcement. However, the stock has been slowly creeping upward since that drop, perhaps suggesting that investors endorse Buffett’s hand-selected successor as CEO, Greg Abel.

It’s certainly too much to ask the first new Berkshire Hathaway CEO in 60 years to replicate the performance of his world-beating predecessor, fondly dubbed the “Oracle of Omaha.” However, Buffett and Abel have both tried to assure investors that nothing will change in terms of how the company is operated going forward. Only time will tell whether or not Abel can manage to maintain the company’s market-beating performance.

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