Berkshire grades itself
The recursive case: how BRK.B grades against the 7 frameworks Buffett helped popularise. Five pass, two are borderline; the borderline cases tell you something about the framework set itself.
Grade matrix
Six A's plus a B for Smith. Composite landed at 76 (Grade A). The interesting case is the Fisher and Smith dips: both frameworks were designed for businesses, not holding companies, and BRK.B exposes the rubric's edge case.
| Framework | Grade | Score | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buffett-Fit | A | 76 | Owns the playbook; predictably scores well on moat, durability, management. Valuation cheap on a book-value basis. |
| Graham (Defensive) | A | 82 | Earnings stability rivals any company in the index. Book value below intrinsic per Berkshire's own buyback policy. |
| Fisher (Growth-quality) | B | 65 | Fisher's scuttlebutt method weights R&D and product cadence; Berkshire is a holding company, not a product company. Mid-tier fit. |
| Lynch (GARP) | B | 67 | GARP discipline weights earnings growth rate; Berkshire grows by capital allocation rather than organic earnings expansion. Borderline pass. |
| Greenblatt (Magic Formula) | A | 79 | Earnings yield top-decile, ROIC high enough on operating businesses. Magic Formula likes BRK.B. |
| Munger (Mental models) | A | 88 | The strongest of the seven. Munger's framework was authored on this exact case study. |
| Smith (Fundsmith quality) | B | 68 | Smith requires ROCE consistently above 30%; the insurance + utility mix dampens BRK's blended ROCE below the Smith bar. |
The five clean passes
Buffett-Fit, Graham, Greenblatt, Munger, and Lynch all pass BRK.B cleanly. Berkshire's 60-year operating record is the textbook on each of these methodologies. The earnings stability (Graham), the capital allocation discipline (Buffett, Munger), the cheap-on-book-value starting point (Graham, Greenblatt), and the moat (auto insurance dominance, railroad infrastructure, utility monopolies) all clear the relevant bars.
Munger's framework scores the highest of any (88). This is unsurprising; the mental-model methodology was authored on Berkshire as the central case study. The lollapalooza effect, behavioral economics edges, and multi-disciplinary thinking that Munger writes about are all visible in the Berkshire portfolio construction.
Why Fisher and Smith dip
Both frameworks were designed for operating businesses, not holding companies. Fisher's 15-point checklist weights R&D investment, product cadence, sales organisation effectiveness, manufacturing efficiency. BRK.B doesn't do R&D; it allocates capital between wholly-owned operating subsidiaries (BNSF, GEICO, Berkshire Hathaway Energy) and equity holdings. The underlying subsidiaries score well on Fisher individually but the holding-company structure dilutes the headline score.
Smith's framework requires ROCE consistently above 30%. The blended ROCE across BRK's mix of capital-light operating businesses (See's Candies, GEICO underwriting) and capital-heavy ones (BNSF, BHE) lands in the high teens, comfortably above market median but below the Smith bar. Smith is explicit that he would not own most diversified holding companies for exactly this reason. The framework is internally consistent; BRK.B exposes the design constraint.
What this teaches about the methodology
The Fisher and Smith dips on BRK.B illustrate why multi-framework consensus is informative in a way no single framework is. A pure-Smith investor would underweight BRK.B; a pure-Munger investor would overweight it. The 5+/7 consensus screen recognises that the asset clears five strong tests and exposes the borderline status of the two outliers. That spread is the actionable signal: BRK.B passes the consensus screen with framework-quality nuance written into the per- framework grades.
For investors who want a single answer rather than a spread, Buffett-Fit alone (A grade) is the headline verdict. For investors who want the methodological honesty, the per-framework grades show exactly which rubric bars BRK.B clears and which it borderlines.
Educational only. Not investment advice. Snapshot dated May 26, 2026.