No. of Recommendations: 11
You make the core part of your portfolio a broad index, and then you put whatever you want around it
Excellent advice. I recommend my to my family (and whoever else might ask) that they follow it.
Uh, I didn't.
I don't remember the exact numbers (and as I've posted here before) but the essence was that sometime during spring break 2000 (I remember in moments between herding our children I was checking my email from the hotel near Lego Land), I had taken almost all of my 401(K) (between $60-$65K) and buying a single A share of BRK with it (for around $58 - $62K).
Occurred to me this morning on reading the above that today was the 25th anniversary, more or less, of that purchase.
Yahoo financial says as of this moment, the Mar 31 2000 - Mar 31 2025 appreciation of BRK has been 1,367%, and that of the S&P 500 274%
Of course, the S&P has dividends
I'm too lazy to do the math the right way - much less dive into the tax implications of dividend interest in my peak earning years, but Perplexity tells me approximating 1.8% or so would be about right.
So (1.018)^^25 = 1.562. So, roughly right is kinda 274% times 1.56, or 428% total return to the S&P index over the 25 years ending today.
About a thousand percent less than Berkshire.
A few years later, Charlie Munger made the comment to the effect that the key was to not make many moves, but when you did, do them decisively and using enough of your chips to make a difference.(1)
-- sutton
counting the BRK core as one of the half-dozen best decisions of my life
(1) "Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime. And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past". - CAM, Poor Charlie's Almanack
