Yahoo Finance revisits Berkshire’s long run, asking whether Buffett-style compounding can be replicated in a new era

Berkshire Hathaway’s ability to compound capital over decades remains a benchmark investors cite when they talk about “quality” investing. In a new Yahoo Finance analysis published Oct. 16, the outlet argues that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire produced an average 19.7% return per year from 1965 through 2025, nearly doubling the S&P 500’s 10.5% annual return over the same period.

The comparison matters because it frames Berkshire not just as a large-cap holding company, but as a long-horizon allocator of cash into a portfolio of operating businesses and investments. The piece uses the spread between Berkshire and the broad market to make a central question, whether the underlying playbook can still deliver comparable results as markets, competition, and leadership transition evolve.

While Buffett remains the face of the strategy, the article also indicates a practical complication for investors, the difficulty of following in the footsteps of a founder-level investor. It specifically characterizes the next phase of leadership as a “tough act to follow” for Greg Abel, Berkshire’s designated successor and long-time operating leader.

That leadership framing is especially relevant because Berkshire’s performance is often attributed to more than simply stock selection. Observers typically associate Berkshire’s returns with capital discipline, a preference for durable businesses, and the use of insurance float (the money held from premiums before claims are paid) to fund acquisitions and investments. The Yahoo Finance post does not, in its headline framing, lay out a fresh dataset or new operational disclosure, but it uses the performance numbers to stress how rare that outcome has been historically.

Even if investors accept the historical comparison, the question becomes how much of it is replicable. A 19.7% annualized outcome across multiple decades is hard to reproduce under any methodology, and the gap versus the S&P 500 suggests both skill and favorable conditions. The Yahoo Finance piece, by its framing, implies that applying a Buffett-style approach requires more than copying past winners, it requires the ability to continually find opportunities and manage risk when the valuation, interest-rate, and business cycle backdrop shifts.

For Berkshire, the story also lands on timing. As the company moves further from the earliest era of Buffett’s tenure, the market’s focus tends to shift to whether the investment and operating machine can maintain discipline without the same central decision-making role. Greg Abel’s position, highlighted in the post’s description, becomes a proxy for that transition, even though the headline framing does not provide new quantitative evidence about forward returns.

From a disclosure standpoint, the Yahoo Finance item is presented as market commentary tied to a performance comparison. Based on what is available in the provided material, it does not include new Berkshire filings, segment results, or updated guidance in the same way a company release or regulatory filing would. Any deeper claims about the specific sources of returns or changes in the strategy would require additional primary documentation beyond the headline framing.

Looking ahead, investors will likely watch for evidence that Berkshire can sustain capital allocation discipline in real time, whether through acquisition activity, growth at major operating subsidiaries, and continued management of the insurance-related balance sheet. The next “test” of the compounding thesis is not simply what the company did in the past, but what it does when opportunities are scarcer and execution is measured over shorter, more frequent intervals.