Estimated return — disclosed long book

What Warren Buffett’s US-listed long positions did, derived from the share counts and market values in consecutive 13F filings, shown against SPY over exactly the same quarters. This is not the fund’s return. A 13F excludes shorts, bonds, cash, non-US listings and derivatives, says nothing about fees or leverage, and only sees positions held at both quarter ends. The fund figure is a price return while SPY is a total return, so the comparison is tilted against the manager by roughly a dividend yield.

Q1 2026
-0.9%
SPY -4.4% +3.5%
By calendar year
YearEstimatedSPYDifference
2025+9.8%+17.7%-7.9%
2024+19.9%+24.9%-5.0%
20232/4 Q+19.0%+16.8%+2.2%
2022-17.8%-18.2%+0.4%
2021+27.4%+28.7%-1.3%
20203/4 Q-3.4%+8.5%-11.9%
2019+36.8%+31.2%+5.6%
2018-15.5%-4.6%-10.9%
2017+12.7%+21.7%-9.0%
20161/4 Q+7.2%+4.0%+3.2%

Years marked n/4 Qare built from fewer than four quarters, and the benchmark shown beside them covers the same partial set — so the difference is like-for-like, but the year is not a full year.