Ed, I appreciate the reply and you looking into the annual returns. I did take a look at the annual report, and you are correct. If you look at 2005 through the end of 2019 BRK.A did outperform the S&P 500. I was using trailing returns from 2/11/2020 on Morningstar's Advisor Workstation. At that point SPY (ETF) was up 3.2% in 2020, while BRK.A was down roughly .43%. The trailing return may have skewed the result.
Buffet is a Star manager in my eyes, and the main point of the paper is not that there are no more star managers, but that it becomes increasingly more difficult to outshine in an ever increasing competitive field. Again, using Morningstar's Advisor workstation, as of 4/9/2020 BRK.A 10 year trailing return is 9.15% with SPY (ETF) at 11.04%, and on a 15 year basis BRK.A return is 8.38%, with SPY at 8.04%. The numbers support the thesis, in that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find managers that compounded at the rates of return of Peter Lynch and John Neff, CFA, above and beyond the benchmark.
Thank you for reading and the input.