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Warren Buffett may have said he was \u201cgoing quiet\u201d after he retired from his role as Berkshire Hathaway CEO last year, but the investment strategy of his sunset years in business certainly didn\u2019t seem to get the memo. The old dog still has some tricks, it seems, as in the legendary investor\u2019s absence, Berkshire Hathaway has reaped massive gains from one of Buffett\u2019s final, most contrarian plays.<\/p>\n
In 2020, Buffett\u2019s investing vehicle announced it had acquired positions in five major Japanese trading companies. The stakes were worth slightly more than 5% in each firm, around $6.25 billion in total. At the time, Berkshire Hathaway signaled it was part of a long-term strategy, and the company was open to increasing its stakes under the right circumstances.<\/p>\n
Fast-forward five years, and the Omaha-based giant did increase its holdings\u2014multiple times, in fact, as solid stock market growth in Japan has seen Buffett\u2019s bet more than pay off. Berkshire\u2019s Japanese portfolio is now worth more than $30 billion, notching the company $24 billion in half a decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those numbers are a result of both Buffett\u2019s shrewd calls on stocks that ended up being undervalued, as well as recent policy changes in Japan, including widespread corporate governance reforms and new pro-growth government rules and spending that have benefited technology companies. But it is also telling of where in the world the biggest investment gains are to be had. While U.S. stocks have been no slouch in the past year, international equivalents have generally outperformed them, lending fuel to the recent \u201cSell America\u201d trend as investors began reducing exposure to U.S. assets. While Berkshire Hathaway remains heavily invested in America, one of Buffett\u2019s last big bets shows the upside of going a little global.<\/p>\n
Starting in 2019, Berkshire began building stakes in five major Japanese \u201csogo shosha\u201d companies, large and diversified firms active in everything from energy to electronics. Buffett upped his company\u2019s stakes in 2023, and did so again last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the time, the move wasn\u2019t immediately obvious as a slam dunk. Japan\u2019s stock market had barely grown for nearly 30 years when Berkshire first announced its position, an economic mire known as the country\u2019s \u201clost decades\u201d after 1989, when an asset market crash kickstarted a prolonged period of stagnant growth.<\/p>\n
Buffett financed much of the bet via cheap debt denominated in Japanese yen, costing him around 1% interest, while the trading houses he had invested in were paying out dividends of around 4%, covering costs handsomely.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Political winds helped Buffett\u2019s investments soar, too. After decades of strict economic governance, Japan has, in the past few years, adopted pro-growth and deregulatory policies that have sent its stock market rocketing to record highs. Sanae Takaichi, Japan\u2019s prime minister since October, even made the end of \u201cexcessive fiscal austerity\u201d a centerpiece of her snap election this month. That campaign delivered her party a landslide victory and a legislative supermajority, as well as a historic mandate to enact its economic agenda.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s shifting economic policy landscape comes with some question marks. The country entered a technical recession in 2024 on the back of high inflation and weak domestic demand, and has run the risk of doing so again in the years since. And Takaichi\u2019s stimulus-heavy prescription for the economy has shaken bond vigilantes, while analysts have also warned about the possibility of a worsening debt crisis.<\/p>\n
But these worries have done little to dent Buffett\u2019s triumph, which spotlights how well international markets have fared over the past year compared to the U.S. In 2025, overseas stock markets soared 28%, topping the S&P 500\u2019s 16%. The Nikkei, Japan\u2019s stock market index, also significantly outperformed the S&P 500, rising 38.6% over the past year.<\/p>\n
A softer dollar, trade tensions, and U.S. tech concentration have driven more capital flows abroad in the past year, a trend that has persisted into 2026. Berkshire Hathaway is still, for the most part, invested in U.S. assets\u2014but it\u2019s also unlikely to shed its Japan positions anytime soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s worked out very well so far, but we\u2019ll be in these stocks 10, 20 years,\u201d Buffett told CNBC<\/em> <\/em>in 2023 <\/em>of his Japan holdings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Warren #Buffetts #Japan #bet #nets #Berkshire #Hathaway #billion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warren Buffett may have said h… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[7295,1260,157,579,6530,7484,12531,22,4732,5591,91,1262,1261],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}