Legendary investor Warren Buffett is moving on from the CEO role of Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK) (NYSE: BRK) at the end of 2025, a position he has held since 1970.
Known for his strong historical returns for investors, Buffett has outperformed the S&P 500 in recent years, but is currently trailing behind the market index with one month left in 2025.
Buffett Vs. S&P 500
Buffett has been in leadership roles with Berkshire Hathaway since 1965 and the CEO role since 1970. Many of those years Buffett and Berkshire outperformed the S&P 500, which is tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY).
In three of the last four years and 11 of the last 20 years, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has outperformed the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust.
Here's a look at the last four years:
- 2024: BRKB +27.1%, SPY +24.1%
- 2023: BRKB: +15.5%, SPY +26.7%
- 2022: BRKB +3.3%, SPY -17.5%
- 2021: BRKB +29.0%, SPY +28.7%
The lone underperformance in the last four years was in 2023. A look at 2022 could show one of the things that Berkshire Hathaway has been known for, which is not only producing strong returns in bull markets, but having lower losses during tough times.
In 2022, when the SPY was down 17.5%, Berkshire Hathaway was up 3.3%. Other tough market years like 2018 also saw BRKB up 3.0% with the SPY down 4.6%. In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway stock was down 32.1%, outperforming the 36.8% loss of the SPY.
2025 Underperformance
With December now here, there is one month left in 2025 and Buffett's conglomerate trails the S&P 500. At the time of writing, Berkshire Hathaway stock is up 13.5% year-to-date, trailing the 16.7% gain for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust.
While Berkshire Hathaway has underperformed for most of 2025 versus the S&P 500 ETF, recent performance in the last month has closed the gap.
Berkshire Hathaway shares are up 7.4% over the last month, versus a 0.4% decline for the SPY over the same time period.
Potentially helping to close the gap could be recent gains in stocks that are in the Berkshire Hathaway investment portfolio and investors seeing the likely future gains to the conglomerate's net asset value.
Berkshire Hathaway unveiled a new large purchase of Alphabet Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL) shares in its third quarter 13F filing. The purchase of 17,846,142 shares made the Magnificent Seven stock one of the top 10 holdings in the Berkshire Hathaway investment portfolio.
While Berkshire Hathaway has been trimming its stake in Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) in recent quarters, the new stake in Alphabet could represent a new bet on AI growth, future technology and more. With the stock purchase, Berkshire now owns stock in three Magnificent Seven stocks, with Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) being the other.
Other top Berkshire holdings like American Express (NYSE: AXP), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) have outperformed the S&P 500 year-to-date in 2025.
One reason for the potential underperformance of Berkshire Hathaway shares in Buffett's last year as CEO could be the very fact that he is leaving. The stock has likely had a premium built-in on the backs of investors looking to follow the strong stock picks of the legendary investor.
With Buffett stepping aside, investors may have less faith or patience in the stock picks of his investment team.
Time will tell if 2025 ends up belonging to Berkshire Hathaway or the S&P 500 when it comes to having the better return.