At least painful lessons like these helped me find Buffett & Berkshire shortly thereafter!

Same for a lot of us. I think mine was the Third Avenue Value Fund. Loews (not Lowes) and Leucadia (now Jefferies) spring to mind, too.

But to be fair, we shouldn't fall for survivorship bias. It has worked out astoundingly well with Berkshire, but it might not have. We didn't know the future, we just guessed it, and our guess turned out to have been correct.

Memories! I used to have my biggest investment in Berkshire, but I also had substantial investments in three of the often-cited mini-Berkshires, which were Fairfax, Loews, and Leucadia; for some reason, I never like Markel management and never bought it. Am I missing any other Berkshire look-alikes?

Anyways, Berkshire has done well, but in fact so have the other 3 I owned, and so has Markel. Looking from 2001-01-19 (25 years ago, and roughly the time I remember owning them), Berkshire is up 979%, or 10.0%, which is much better than the S&P 500 (total return), up only 711%, or 8.7%. But it is not the best performer of the five.

That would be Fairfax, which has become my biggest investment, partly by choice, but partly by increasing 1245% in the first 21st century, which is 11.0% a year.

Market did almost as well, in second place with a return of 1167%, 10.7%/year.

Berkshire was third at 10.0%, and then Leucadia, now Jefferies, at 837%, or 9.4%/year.

The S&P 500 total return index would have provided a 711% return, or 8.7%/year, and Loews returned 707%, also 8.7%/year, just a hair behind the index.

Different start dates from my arbitrary one 25 years ago would give slightly different results, but all things considered, despite the big run-up in the S&P in recent years, all 5 of these big value conglomerates have done pretty well, even without survivorship bias.

Regards, DTB