No. of Recommendations: 10
Aside from the things Phil mentioned, for me, a big advantage of Berkshire in the last 18 years has been that the S&P 500 has been overvalued for the bulk of this period. This meant that most of my funds went towards buying Berkshire and none towards the index.
If the S&P 500 index was more undervalued than Berkshire, I may have invested more funds in an index fund representing it than in Berkshire. Hence, by having both, one gets the flexibility to choose where to invest, depending on valuation levels.
As Mr. Buffett has said, in the long term (say. next 20 years), the returns from both are likely to be very similar. But I still prefer whichever is more undervalued.
