Meme stocks, meme coins, options trading, leverage, and now the AI boom have all tempted everyday investors chasing fast riches, often using capital they cannot afford to lose. Warren Buffett built one of the greatest track records in market history by refusing to chase any of it. His central rule for long-term investing has held up through every single cycle since he took control of Berkshire Hathaway six decades ago.
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) is widely considered one of the greatest stocks of all time, and the numbers back that up. Between 1965 and 2025, the stock generated compound annual gains of 19.7% and a total gain of roughly 6,099,294%, compared with 10.5% annual gains and a 46,061% total gain for the S&P 500 over the same stretch, according to The Motley Fool. Buffett, who stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025, laid out the philosophy behind that performance in his 1996 letter to shareholders.
Investors should focus on purchasing easily understandable businesses "whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, 10, and 20 years from now," he wrote, cautioning that only a handful of companies actually qualify. Warren Buffett reveals he broke his own investing pattern Warren Buffett has a blunt take on today's market Warren Buffett pulls no punches on stock market for 2026 "If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes," Buffett wrote in that same letter. The line has become one of his most repeated pieces of advice to investors.
It has been cited across decades of interviews and shareholder letters as the foundation of his approach when picking stocks. Buffett reinforced the same idea during his final year as CEO, telling CNBC's Becky Quick that Berkshire "has a better chance of being here 100 years from now than any company I can think of," a comment that framed the company itself as the ultimate example of his own philosophy. History has rarely proven Buffett wrong on this point.
Plenty of companies have looked like fantastic stocks in the near term only to burn investors who held on too long, part of why Buffett so rarely chases whatever happens to be the hottest stock in the market at any given moment. A $100 investment in Berkshire at the start of 1965 would be worth roughly $6.1 million by the end of 2025, versus about $45,500 for the same investment in the S&P 500. Berkshire posted positive returns in 50 of those 61 years, with average gains in winning years of 32% versus 19% for the S&P 500, according to Visual Capitalist.
From 2015 to 2025, Berkshire returned 234% while the S&P 500 put up 304%. Buffett didn't own any of them. The decade that belonged to AI was the one stretch where his discipline cost him relative performance.
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