Buffett admits Berkshire can’t beat the market like before

Berkshire is getting smoked by the S&P 500 in 2025, and it’s not even close. Since May 3, when Warren Buffett said he was stepping back, the company’s B shares have dropped more than 12%, wiping out most of its early-year gains.

That leaves Berkshire with a weak 4.5% gain year-to-date, while the S&P 500 is up 7%. And it’s not just a one-off week or two. The B shares have finished six of the last seven weeks in the red, and unless July does a complete 180, they’re staring down three straight negative months.

If that happens, it’ll be the longest losing streak since June 2022. For a stock that used to print green candles like clockwork, that’s a big shift. And here’s the real kicker—the stock finally broke below its 200-day moving average after staying above it for 573 consecutive trading days, the longest run since the B shares even existed, back in 1996.

Buffett admits Berkshire can’t beat the market like before

Warren hasn’t exactly been hyping up Berkshire’s chances of blowing past the market anymore. In his 2023 shareholder letter, he straight up said, “With our present mix of businesses, Berkshire should do a bit better than the average American corporation and, more important, should also operate with materially less risk of permanent loss of capital.” Then he added, “Anything beyond ‘slightly better,’ though, is wishful thinking.” Translation: the glory days of major outperformance are over.

And that makes sense when you look at the numbers Berkshire is working with. The company is sitting on so much cash that making any single investment move the needle is getting nearly impossible.

Even the businesses they already own, stuff like BNSF Railway and See’s Candy, are stable, but not going to suddenly explode in growth. Warren’s not sugarcoating it. He knows what this machine can and can’t do at this size.

But size is also what’s kept Berkshire dominant for decades. This is a company with holdings across 40 industries and more than 60 different companies, which gave it the power to double the average annual return of the S&P 500 from 1964 to 2024, with a ridiculous total return of 5,502,284%. Those numbers are real, but the message now is clear: the past is the past. Going forward, expect slow and steady, not spectacular.

Berkshire still makes $93,150 every hour from Coca-Cola

Despite all the red candles, there’s one part of Berkshire that just keeps spitting out cash like a broken ATM—its Coca-Cola stake. The company owns 400 million shares of Coca-Cola, and those shares pay a dividend of $2.04 per share per year. Do the math, and that’s $816 million a year in passive income. Not from some flashy AI startup or moonshot gamble. Just soda.

That means every day, Berkshire earns $2,235,616 from Coca-Cola dividends. Every hour? $93,150. While most people spend an entire year trying to make ends meet, Berkshire rakes in six figures an hour, just from one single holding. And that’s with zero effort. The company doesn’t manage Coke, it doesn’t touch it. It just collects checks.

This investment goes back decades. Warren bought Coca-Cola because it was simple, profitable, and global. And over the years, he’s refused to sell a single share. That steady flow of cash is why Berkshire hasn’t needed to chase hype to stay alive.

But it’s also part of why Berkshire’s stock isn’t growing the way tech-heavy names or high-beta plays are. That Coca-Cola dividend is solid, but it’s not going to light up the scoreboard in a bull market driven by AI, crypto, or meme stocks.

And speaking of crypto… yeah, Warren still hates it. He hasn’t budged, not even after two years of bitcoin rallying and making headlines. He’s stayed laser-focused on traditional assets.

But see this performance gap between Berkshire and the broader market? That’s exactly the kind of thing crypto investors have been screaming about. Old-school portfolios are struggling while new systems rise.

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