That year Buffett’s hedge fund returned 10.4% and Buffett took only 1.1 percentage points of that as “fees”. His investors didn’t mind that he underperformed the market in 1958 because he beat the market by a large margin in 1957. That would have been 9.35% in hedge fund “fees”.Īctually Warren Buffett failed to beat the S&P 500 Index in 1958, returned only 40.9% and pocketed 8.7 percentage of it as “fees”. secretly invested like a closet index fund), Warren Buffett would have pocketed a quarter of the 37.4% excess return. If Warren Buffett’s hedge fund didn’t generate any outperformance (i.e. Warren Buffett took 25% of all returns in excess of 6 percent.įor example S&P 500 Index returned 43.4% in 1958. Back then they weren’t called hedge funds, they were called “partnerships”. He launched his hedge fund in 1956 with $105,100 in seed capital. Warren Buffett never mentions this but he is one of the first hedge fund managers who unlocked the secrets of successful stock market investing.
