Tracking against an index is somewhat meaningful, but sort of misses the point. Berkshire Hathaway manages about $800 billion dollars in assets. If you are try

Tracking against an index is somewhat meaningful, but sort of misses the point. Berkshire Hathaway manages about $800 billion dollars in assets. If you are trying to figure out what to do with your 401(k) or a portfolio of 10k-$10m, index funds are great. If you are in charge of managing almost $1 trillion in assets, it's a completely different ballgame. What's they've done is amazing - every move they make in the public markets is a huge signal and has market manipulating implications. You can't really compare them to an index fund and learn anything meaningful, unless you are comparing putting your $10k into either Berkshire or an index fund.