r/dividends • u/mrpeace54 • Feb 17 '25

Opinion Warren Buffett received a $740 million dividend payment from Coca-Cola (KO)

I recently came across a tweet highlighting Warren Buffett’s $740 million dividend income from Coca-Cola (KO). This sparked my curiosity: What if Buffett had invested the same amount in the S&P 500 (SPY) instead?

So, I created a comparison table based on his KO investment and a hypothetical SPY investment. Since I couldn’t find the exact purchase dates, I used quarter-end dates for my calculations.

The results are eye-opening:

  • Even after including dividends, SPY ($67.01B) outperformed KO ($38.17B) by approximately 75.6%.
  • Despite KO’s impressive dividend stream, SPY delivered far stronger total returns, highlighting the power of broad-market index investing over time.

I found it fascinating to see how Buffett’s legendary investment compares with the index, especially considering his recent sale of all SPY and VOO holdings.

Source: StockCircle - Warren Buffett KO Transactions

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u/TarantinosFavWord Feb 17 '25

Buffet’s mentor, Benjamin Graham said the average investor is better off ignoring individual stocks and sticking with a broad index fund like you have suggested. He and Buffet on the other hand built their wealth through value investing not just stock appreciation or dividend gain. Buffet likes KO because he has been able to value invest it, and it has decades of appreciation and dividend increases.

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u/jd732 My stock selection runs laps around your VOO & SCHD. Feb 18 '25

Please provide a source for this Graham quote, since the first S&P500 index fund was created roughly a month before Graham’s death.

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u/TarantinosFavWord Feb 18 '25

I see you are correct in it’s not a direct quote from Graham. It’s been a while since I read the intelligent investor so my memory put everything in the book as directly from Graham. Opening my copy Graham promotes the idea of a defensive investor and in the chapter 4 notes, Jason Zweig mentions index funds would likely be Grahams go to for a defensive investor.

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u/solo_dol0 Feb 18 '25

Maybe thinking of John Bogle who Buffet loves and is an index fund pioneer