The thesis
“Buying the Nasdaq and never selling since 2000.”
How buffet read it
$10,000 invested in QQQ (Nasdaq 100) on January 1, 2000.
Never sold — held through to today.
Dividends reinvested.
2000–2026, benchmarked against the S&P 500.
QQQ · 6,704 trading days · benchmark SPY
$10,000 became
$0
The same money in the S&P 500 would have been $84,488 over 2000–2026 — the thesis came out ahead by $5,130.
The worst stretch
−83.0%, March 2000 to October 2002 — you would have sat through 31 months of that, and it took until February 2015 to get back to level.
the S&P 500 fell 55.2% at its worst over the same period. The thesis moved 26.7% a year against 19.3% for the index.
Where the thesis was wrong
The thesis beat the S&P 500 by $5,130 over 2000–2026, ending at $89,618 against the index's $84,488. That margin required surviving an −83.0% drawdown from March 2000 to October 2002, with no recovery to the starting level until February 2015 — nearly fifteen years underwater. In 2000 alone the thesis fell −38.4% while the index lost only −8.8%, and volatility ran at 26.7% annually against the index's 19.3% the whole way through. The entire outperformance depended on concentration in the same names that caused the collapse, and anyone who needed the money before 2015 did not get the result.
Counter-test
Same money, same schedule, parked in 1–3 month T-bills instead: $13,102.
Year by year
| Year | The thesis | SPY |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | −38.4% | −8.8% |
| 2001 | −33.3% | −11.8% |
| 2002 | −37.4% | −21.6% |
| 2003 | +49.7% | +28.2% |
| 2004 | +10.5% | +10.7% |
| 2005 | +1.6% | +4.8% |
| 2006 | +7.1% | +15.8% |
| 2007 | +19.0% | +5.1% |
| 2008 | −41.7% | −36.8% |
| 2009 | +54.7% | +26.4% |
| 2010 | +19.9% | +15.1% |
| 2011 | +3.4% | +1.9% |
| 2012 | +18.1% | +16.0% |
| 2013 | +36.6% | +32.3% |
| 2014 | +19.2% | +13.5% |
| 2015 | +9.4% | +1.3% |
| 2016 | +7.1% | +12.0% |
| 2017 | +32.7% | +21.7% |
| 2018 | −0.1% | −4.6% |
| 2019 | +39.0% | +31.2% |
| 2020 | +48.6% | +18.4% |
| 2021 | +27.4% | +28.7% |
| 2022 | −32.6% | −18.2% |
| 2023 | +54.9% | +26.2% |
| 2024 | +25.6% | +24.9% |
| 2025 | +20.8% | +17.7% |
| 2026 | +16.9% | +13.4% |
What this verdict does not include
- US-listed stocks and ETFs only, priced on end-of-day closes.
- No tax, no trading fees, no slippage, no bid-ask spread.
- Dividends are reinvested, because closes are adjusted for them.
- Survivorship is not corrected for: only instruments that exist today are held.
- QQQ tracks the Nasdaq 100, not the full Nasdaq Composite; it is the standard liquid proxy for Nasdaq exposure and covers the same dominant tech names.
- The start date of January 1, 2000 captures the peak of the dot-com bubble, which is the most stress-testing entry point for this thesis.
Keep this thesis
buffet re-runs it once a month and mails you the new number. Nothing else is ever sent.
Another thesis
Every verdict names something it could not test. That gap is usually the next thesis.
Run another thesis — $5