Warren Buffett may have said he was “going quiet” after he retired from his role as Berkshire Hathaway CEO last year, but the investment strategy of his sunset years in business certainly didn’t seem to get the memo. The old dog still has some tricks, it seems, as in the legendary investor’s absence, Berkshire Hathaway has reaped massive gains from one of Buffett’s final, most contrarian plays.
In 2020, Buffett’s 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.
Fast-forward five years, and the Omaha-based giant did increase its holdings—multiple times, in fact, as solid stock market growth in Japan has seen Buffett’s bet more than pay off. Berkshire’s Japanese portfolio is now worth more than $30 billion, notching the company $24 billion in half a decade.
Those numbers are a result of both Buffett’s 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 “Sell America” trend as investors began reducing exposure to U.S. assets. While Berkshire Hathaway remains heavily invested in America, one of Buffett’s last big bets shows the upside of going a little global.
Right place, right time
Starting in 2019, Berkshire began building stakes in five major Japanese “sogo shosha” companies, large and diversified firms active in everything from energy to electronics. Buffett upped his company’s stakes in 2023, and did so again last year.
At the time, the move wasn’t immediately obvious as a slam dunk. Japan’s stock market had barely grown for nearly 30 years when Berkshire first announced its position, an economic mire known as the country’s “lost decades” after 1989, when an asset market crash kickstarted a prolonged period of stagnant growth.
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.
Political winds helped Buffett’s 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’s prime minister since October, even made the end of “excessive fiscal austerity” 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.
Japan’s 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’s stimulus-heavy prescription for the economy has shaken bond vigilantes, while analysts have also warned about the possibility of a worsening debt crisis.
But these worries have done little to dent Buffett’s 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’s 16%. The Nikkei, Japan’s stock market index, also significantly outperformed the S&P 500, rising 38.6% over the past year.
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—but it’s also unlikely to shed its Japan positions anytime soon.
“It’s worked out very well so far, but we’ll be in these stocks 10, 20 years,” Buffett told CNBC in 2023 of his Japan holdings.
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