What Happens if You Invest $500 in This Stock and Hold It for 10 Years? (Hint: Warren Buffett Will Be Very Interested in the Answer)

Let’s play a what-if game. Imagine that you plunk, say, $500 in Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B). (Note that Buffett recently retired, and the new CEO is a longtime lieutenant, Greg Abel, in whom Buffett has expressed great confidence.) What would your stake be worth in a decade?

Here’s a look at that question.

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With a recent market value of about $1 trillion, Berkshire Hathaway is a classic blue chip stock. It’s not currently a dividend-paying stock, which is a bit unusual for a well-run company of its size, but some speculate that Abel may well institute a dividend. (The company’s third-quarter report revealed a cash hoard that has reached $382 billion, after all.)

If you invest in Berkshire Hathaway, you’ll be a part owner of many businesses entirely owned by Berkshire, such as GEICO, Benjamin Moore, See’s Candies, and the entire BNSF railroad — and you’ll have a stake in Berkshire’s stock portfolio, too, which features major positions in companies such as Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Bank of America. (Berkshire recently owned 9% of Coca-Cola, for example, and 2% of Apple.)

So what kind of return can you expect from Berkshire over the next 10 years? Here’s how it’s done in the past:

Source: Data from Morningstar.com as of Jan. 29, 2026.

We shouldn’t expect such fat returns every year, though. Remember that the stock market has averaged annual returns of close to 10% over many decades — and Berkshire is no longer a modest-sized and nimble fast-grower.

Still, let’s be a bit conservative and assume that the stock will average a total annual return of, say, 11% over the coming decade — with or without a dividend. If it does, that will boost your stake’s value to $1,420.

Here’s what it will be worth at different growth levels (since we can’t know exactly how the stock — or the market — will do):

Calculations by author.