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Comment on Berkshire Hathaway 2018 Annual Shareholder Letter [pdf]parent

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I feel like this doesn’t lend itself well to that graph style, hard to interpret. Maybe some log scale needs to be applied to the y axis first to point out the differences.

Agree that it is not easy to interpret.

I could add a log scale chart, but since the value is the annual percentage change of market value, I think a linear scale is the right choice. But I'm not 100% sure. Would like to hear some opinions on this.

It's more interesting as log-scale cumulative returns. The fact that Buffett dramatically outperformed the S&P 500 in...uh, I think it was 1976, but it's hard to read on the chart...is mildly interesting, but the really striking figure would be "Given $1000 invested in Berkshire Hathaway in 1966 vs. $1000 invested in the S&P 500, where would you be now?"

It doesn’t have to be log scale, but you should use cumulative returns, ie add 1 to each number and calculate a cumulative product.

A line connecting the points would be very helpful.

One way to show the difference would be to sort one of the graphs - though it would mix up the years.

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