Buffett's Billion-Dollar Bets Pay Off Big Time

Warren Buffett's long and illustrious career at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway has yielded staggering returns for investors, with shares soaring over 6 million percent since he started building his investment company in 1965. To put that into perspective, the benchmark S&P 500 index gained a mere 46,061 percent over the same period.

Buffett himself credits roughly a dozen truly great decisions made during his storied investing career as the key to his success. Among these, several stand out for their sheer magnitude and prescience, including his investments in Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, National Indemnity, National Fire & Marine, and GEICO.

The most impressive of these may be Buffett's $1 billion bet on Apple in 2016, when concerns over slowing sales sent the stock tumbling. However, what Buffett saw was not a declining trend but rather a product with a deeply attached customer base willing to keep coming back for more. Berkshire continued buying, eventually pouring $36 billion into Apple between 2016 and 2018, before selling down its stake to around $66 billion.

Another notable success story is Buffett's investment in American Express following the Salad Oil Scandal of 1963. Despite the company's shares plummeting as investors feared it could be crushed by losses, Buffett saw an opportunity and invested about $13 million. The bet paid off handsomely, with Berkshire's stake eventually worth between $46 and $56 billion.

The Coca-Cola investment is also notable for its sheer scale and longevity. In 1988, Berkshire spent around $1.3 billion to buy roughly 400 million shares of the beverage giant, which has since grown into one of the company's signature holdings. The roughly $1.3 billion invested turned into a stake that brought billions in profits.