End of An Era

 Today, December 31, 2025, marks Warren Buffett’s last day as the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and it feels like the end of an era. For many years, I have had the pleasure of looking up to many of the masters of the stock market. People who produced outstanding results for themselves and their clients. There are also many who toiled in anonymity and produced wonderful results for their clients. I have also had the pleasure of working with many different types of investors, and that has allowed me to see what works for me and what I could never fully grasp.

Mr. Buffett has been the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway since 1965 (that was before this 59-year-old writer was even born!) and over that 60-year span the stock has produced a compounded annual growth rate of 19%, easily beating the market benchmark. He has built a bit of a cult following and his annual meetings in Omaha every May are stuff of legend. He has been known to take large positions in a small number of equities and reaping large returns. By and large, he has done it the right way. Along the way he has doled out some wonderful advice and tidbits about his investing style. He bought businesses, not pieces of paper. He bought businesses that he understood and could easily explain to a 10-year-old. He studied balance sheets more than income statements. He loved cash flow and he loved businesses that generated large sums of cash. He said that his preferred holding period for a stock is forever. He said that when he bought a stock he would be comfortable not looking at the stock price for the next five years. He clearly bought for the long-term, not for the next quarter. Did he make some bad investments along the way? Sure. But his winners far outnumbered his losers.

So now another investment genius has decided to move on. It made me realize that these masters that I have looked up to for so long are old – and I am right behind them! Mr. Buffett is 95 years old. Every year, I like to put out a piece called “10 Things” that are based on a piece I used to read called “10 Surprises” by Byron Wien. Mr. Wien died in 2023 at the age of 90. Peter Lynch is another great investor whose investment wisdom I liked to follow. He is now in an advanced stage of cognitive decline and no longer makes public appearances. Howard Marks is another investor whose wisdom I like to follow and he is now in his 80’s. I think of some of the people I used to work with. The equity manager who I most admired was a man named Jim Moffett, and he is in his 80’s. He had many pithy little sayings that conveyed a bunch of wisdom. I think of Dave Anderson, whose investment style I could never wrap my mind around, but I am thankful to have been exposed to it. Mr. Anderson also gave me every opportunity I had at UMB and for that I am forever grateful. Mr. Anderson passed away in 2013. For personal money management, nobody could touch my Dad. This is a respect and admiration that has grown by leaps and bounds as I have aged. I will always remember his great advice about buying stuff simply because it was on sale – “It’s the money you spend, not the money you save, that counts.” If you would not have paid full price for it, what have you really gained? If you would have paid full price, and you got it on sale, that was a winner!

I still remember going to a Barnes & Noble in either late 1999 or early 2000 and seeing one of the tables at the front of the store highlighting books around the theme of “Investing.” I remember that every single book on that table was about day trading! I cringed when I saw that and I can only imagine what Mr. Buffett’s reaction would have been. I think that both of us would have preferred to see that table burned to the ground and the memory of it erased. That was not investing that was gambling. If I am going to gamble, then I want to gamble on something far more entertaining that a bunch of numbers on a computer screen! Finally, during the biggest bull market in history, 80% of day traders lost money! Mr. Buffett’s slow and steady won the race and that is how I will always advise others to invest their money.

Today is the end of an era. And a little bit of market wisdom retreats to the sideline. Mr. Buffett did what he loved, and he was great at it. From what I can gather, he has been retired since 1965! Meanwhile, the market will go on, and other great investors will come along. But, this has been a golden age for someone like me to look up to these masters.