"These metrics are not sufficient to tell you much so should be ignored unless you have much better data to supplement it."

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In totally agree with your comment regarding the starting & ending points being carefully chosen to make one’s point.
However…. I still feel that over a long term, the 1,3,5,& especially the 10,15,20 Yr relative comparisons are of value as Morningstar uses these time periods for its relative comparisons.

As you make the point, the 5 Yrs from 95 thru 99 were , as the Queen would say, “Annus Horribilis” for Berkshire and would guess many on this board recall the "Y2K" & "Party Like It’s 1999”, feeling existing & promoted by Wall St.
I was also convinced that Berkshire was being managed by the best CEO in the country and fully accepted his comments on " Not understanding Tech" as a reason to avoid the investments that could have increased Berkshire's performance in the Y@K runup.

In the Aqua case, "ALL" comparison % were negative over the last 20 yrs & I would find it hard to look much further into an investment that had a 20 yr history of underperformance.

In the case of Berkshire, the 5 years 95 to 99 were also negative however the previous 30 yrs were "ALL" positive with IRR out-perf of the S&P varying from 2.3%/yr (10yrs) , 9.8%/yr (15 yrs), 11.8%/yr (20 yrs)….14.8%/yr (35 yrs , 1965 to 1999).
Over this 35 yr period , Berkshire’s IRR outperformed the S&P over all but the last 5 and the worst starting point for comparison.

ciao