Why is Warren Buffett so revered?

Take away Apple, which he did not even want to invest in (fortunately he listens to Todd Combs and Ted Weschler) and the numbers are worse.

Warren Buffett is the undisputed long-duration champion. From 1965 through end of 2024, Berkshire's shares rose 5,502,284% — a 19.9% annualized compound return vs the S&P's 10.4% over the same six decades. The caveat: over the last 10–20 years it's been a different story — Berkshire has trailed the market since January 2009. His edge is duration — no one else has beaten the market across 60 years.

Peter Lynch posted the highest rate of return of any institutional manager over his run. The Magellan Fund generated a 29% annualized compound return after fees during Lynch's 13-year tenure, delivering cumulative returns of 27 times — while the S&P 500 gained only 4.7 times over the same period. Despite those 29% annualized returns over 13 years, the average Magellan investor actually lost money — because investors consistently bought after strong performance and sold after drawdowns. A lesson unto itself.

Stanley Druckenmiller is arguably the most impressive on a risk-adjusted basis. As the Quantum Fund's lead portfolio manager, he helped George Soros pull off one of the single greatest trades — breaking the Bank of England in 1992 with a bet against the British pound that netted a $1B payday. By the time he closed Duquesne in 2010, he had generated 30% average annual returns with no down years across nearly three decades. Zero losing years over 30 years may be the single hardest feat in this group — Buffett and Lynch both had down stretches relative to the market.

For fun:
Chris Camillo is the outlier — spectacular raw numbers, but with major asterisks. His nearly 15-year track record from 2006 to 2020 boasts an average 77% annual compounded return, confirmed by Jack Schwager, starting with a balance of $84,000 and growing to $42 million in cumulative profits by May 2021. The critical limits: this is a personal account, not institutional capital. Strategy scalability is essentially zero — his approach involves data-mining social media platforms to identify and capitalize on early trends before they become mainstream. You can't run that at $10B. Druckenmiller himself noted that managing more than $10B strained his ability to maintain returns.

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His last 20 years tracks the market, not outperfroms it.

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I'm not a WB fan, but it's harder to find meaningful opportunities the larger you grow. Eventually you get too big for your pond and see your returns diminish unless you can diversify into other things that can match your prior returns (which is rare).

Meh, Jim Simon’s is the goat. 60%+ returns for 30 years straight.

He’s a due diligence investor that’s always been relentless. Back in the day basic information equaled asymmetry if you were hard working and willing to verify it. He comes from the school of “find companies that are massively cheap by any measure and buy them.” It wasn’t easy but it was possible. It’s not a thing anymore.

I think his strategy is more duration and smarter, safer investments and proper hedging to ensure steady growth, not being a person who can pick hot stocks that will shoot up and get you rich quick.

He is just good at managing risk and understanding how the market works. Patience, smart informed investments based on metrics, and not letting emotions guide decisions. His way is guaranteed success, not high risk gambling. A regular person can follow his strategy and end up with a nice retirement and financially secure with plenty to leave his/her descendants. Not a “get rich quick with high risk potentially high percentage returns ” investment strategy

What’s left unstated is he became the go-to source for troubled corporations who would also sell him equity at a discount just to say Warren Buffet took a stake.

I’d be extremely surprised if Berkshire sees those fortuitous benefits moving forward.

Buy blue chips. Drip the dividends. Continue buying next big thing blue chips. Hold for 60 years. Walk away winning.

Still waiting on OXY to moon.