Howard Marks, a great investor in his own right and friend of Buffett’s, credits three things that have allowed the “Oracle of Omaha” to lead Berkshire to new heights, even at his advanced age.
“It’s been a matter of a well-thought-out strategy prosecuted for seven decades with discipline, consistency and unusual insight,” said Marks, co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management. “Discipline and consistency are essential, but not sufficient. Without the unusual insight, he clearly wouldn’t be the greatest investor in history.”
“His record is a testament to the power of compounding at a very high rate for a very long period of time, uninterrupted. He never took a leave of absence,” Marks added.
Berkshire Hathaway
In the midst of the go-go stock market of the 1960s, Buffett used an investment partnership he ran to buy what was then a failing New England textile company named Berkshire Hathaway. Today, his company is unrecognizable from what it once was, with businesses ranging from Geico insurance to BNSF Railway, an equity portfolio worth more than $300 billion and a monstrous $277 billion cash fortress.
Eye-popping returns
Generations of investors who study and imitate Buffett’s investing style have been wowed by his shrewd moves for decades. The Coca-Cola bet from the late 1980s made a lesson for patient value investing in strong brands with wide moats. Injecting a lifeline investment in Goldman Sachs in the depth of the financial crisis showed an opportunistic side during crises. Going all in on Apple in recent years spoke to his flexibility at adopting his value approach to a new age.
Buffett made headlines earlier this month by revealing he had dumped half of that Apple holding, ringing the bell a bit on an extremely lucrative trade. (While Apple is widely viewed as a growth stock, Buffett has long argued all investing is value investing — “You are putting out some money now to get more later on.”)
Decades of good returns snowballed and he has racked up an unparalleled track record. Berkshire shares have generated a 19.8% annualized gain from 1965 through 2023, nearly doubling the 10.2% return of the S&P 500. Cumulatively, the stock has gone up 4,384,748% since Buffett took over, compared with the S&P 500’s 31,223% return.
“He’s the most patient investor ever, which is a big reason for his success,” said Steve Check, founder of Check Capital Management with Berkshire as its biggest holding. “He can sit and sit and sit. Even at his age where there’s not that much time left to sit, he’ll still sit until he feels comfortable. I just think he’ll just keep doing as best he can right to the end.”
Buffett remains chairman and CEO of Berkshire, although Greg Abel, vice chairman of Berkshire’s noninsurance operations and Buffett’s designated successor, has taken on many responsibilities at the conglomerate. Earlier this year, Buffett said Abel, 62, will make all investing decisions when he’s gone.
Buffett and Marks
Oaktree’s Marks said Buffett reinforced concepts that are integral to his own approach. Like Buffett, he is indifferent to macro forecasting and market timing; he seeks value relentlessly, while sticking to his own circle of competence.
Howard Marks, co-chairman, Oaktree Capital.
Courtesy David A. Grogan | CNBC
“He doesn’t care about market timing and trading, but when other people get terrified, he marches in. We try to do the same thing,” Marks said.
Buffett, who at Columbia University studied under Benjamin Graham, has advised investors to view their stock holdings as small pieces of businesses. He believes volatility is a huge plus to the real investor as it offers an opportunity to take advantage of emotional selling.
Oaktree, with $193 billion in assets under management, has grown into one of the biggest alternative investments players in the world, specializing in distressed lending and bargain-hunting.
Marks, 78, has become a sharp, unequivocal contrarian voice in the investing world. His popular investment memos, which he started writing in 1990, are now viewed as required reading on Wall Street and even received a glowing endorsement from Buffett himself — “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they’re the first thing I open and read. I always learn something.”
The two were introduced in the aftermath of the Enron bankruptcy in the early 2000s. Marks revealed that Buffett ultimately motivated him to write his own book — “The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor“— over a decade ahead of his own schedule.
“He was very generous with his comments. I don’t think that book would have been written without his inspiration,” Marks said. “I had been planning to write a book when I retired. But with his encouragement, the book was published 13 years ago.”
Buffett’s trajectory and his ability to enjoy what he does into his 90s also struck a chord with Marks.
“He says that he skips to work in the morning. He tackles investing with gusto and joy,” Marks said. “I still haven’t retired, and I hope never to do so, following his example.”
In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.
That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF(OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.
Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.
In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.
“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.
Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”
The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.
So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.
People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.
The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.
In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.
Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.
Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.
“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”
“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.
He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.
“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”
The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.
“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”
Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.
Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.
Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: T-Mobile — Shares pulled back 11% after the company’s wireless subscribers for the first quarter missed Wall Street estimates. T-Mobile reported 495,000 postpaid phone additions in the first-quarter, while analysts polled by StreetAccount were looking for 504,000. Alphabet — The Google parent company gained about 2% on the heels of better-than-expected first-quarter results . Alphabet reported $2.81 per share on revenue of $90.23 billion, while analysts polled by LSEG forecast $2.01 in earnings per share and $89.12 billion in revenue. Skechers — Shares fell 4.8% after the footwear maker posted weaker-than-expected revenue for the first quarter and withdrew its 2025 guidance due to ” macroeconomic uncertainty stemming from global trade policies .” The company’s earnings for the quarter came in above analysts’ estimates, however. Gilead Sciences — The biopharmaceutical stock fell 2.5% after first-quarter revenue came in at $6.67 billion, missing the consensus forecast of $6.81 billion from analysts polled by LSEG. However, the company earned $1.81 per share, excluding items, in the quarter, beating Wall Street’s estimate of $1.79 a share. Saia — Shares of the shipping company fell 31% after first-quarter results missed estimates and showed a slowdown in March. Saia reported $1.86 in earnings per share on $787.6 million in revenue. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting $2.76 in earnings per share on $812.8 million in revenue. BMO Capital Markets downgraded the stock to market perform from outperform and said the issues were “company specific.” Intel — The chipmaker declined 7% after Intel’s current quarter missed investors’ expectations. Intel forecast revenue in the June quarter of $11.8 billion at the midpoint, while consensus forecasts called for $12.82 billion, per LSEG. Management anticipates earnings will break even. Intel also announced plans to reduce both its operational and capital expenses. Boston Beer — Shares of the Samuel Adams brewer were more than 1% higher after better-than-expected first-quarter results. Boston Beer notched earnings per share of $2.16 on revenue of $453.9 million, while analysts polled by FactSet were looking for 56 cents per share on revenue of $435.6 million. Boston Beer cautioned that tariffs could hurt full-year earnings. Tesla — The Elon Musk-helmed electric vehicle company surged 10%. Shares have advanced more than 17% this week as the broader market tries to recover from a steep sell-off for much of April. — CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Alex Harring and Sean Conlon contributed reporting. Get Your Ticket to Pro LIVE Join us at the New York Stock Exchange! Uncertain markets? Gain an edge with CNBC Pro LIVE , an exclusive, inaugural event at the historic New York Stock Exchange. In today’s dynamic financial landscape, access to expert insights is paramount. As a CNBC Pro subscriber, we invite you to join us for our first exclusive, in-person CNBC Pro LIVE event at the iconic NYSE on Thursday, June 12. Join interactive Pro clinics led by our Pros Carter Worth, Dan Niles and Dan Ives, with a special edition of Pro Talks with Tom Lee. You’ll also get the opportunity to network with CNBC experts, talent and other Pro subscribers during an exciting cocktail hour on the legendary trading floor. Tickets are limited!