Let me start by quoting two of my favorite investing gurus:

"I have come to the realization that I will never own shares in Berkshire."

-- Longtime Fool Rick Munarriz, last Friday

"You may have something better to do with your money than buy Berkshire. [...] Anyone who expects us to come close to replicating the past should sell their stock. It's not gonna happen."

-- Longtime investing genius Warren Buffett, last Saturday

Great minds do think alike, right? The point is, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) doesn't look like a great investment today, no matter what your angle on the company. Fools on Main Street like you, me, and Rick can't work up any enthusiasm for the stagnating giant, and even the Oracle of Omaha wouldn't expect the market-thumping returns of ages past.

Speaking at this year's shareholders' meeting on Saturday, Buffett said that he "would be very happy if we earned 10%, pre-tax" on recent investments like Berkshire's portion of the Wrigley (NYSE: WWY) buyout, the 10.9% stake taken last year in Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI), or last year's investment in 8.6% of Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT).

Buffett made his fortune -- and Berkshire's -- through big bets on small companies, before they hit the big time. If you know what you're doing in the small-cap arena, the risk-and-reward equation can far outstrip anything you'll see in grown-up businesses like Kraft or Burlington Northern. But Berkshire itself has grown far too big to reap any great rewards from the small-stock strategy anymore.

Any investment big enough to move Berkshire's needle is also big enough to rule out open-market buys of small-cap stocks. If Buffett wanted a $500 million holding in chip designer Sigma Designs (Nasdaq: SIGM), for example, he'd pretty much have to buy the entire company.

If the top investors at Berkshire, like Buffett and Charlie Munger, had all the time in the world, they could still put in the legwork to invest in dozens or hundreds of the best Lilliputians on the market, but investment research in the Buffett mold takes time. When somebody invents a time machine or instant cloning devices, you might see that kind of strategy, but until then, Berkshire is unlikely to even invest in the makers of those gadgets.

But you can still get rich from the investing strategy Buffett outgrew. Even if you have a hefty $100,000 to invest in a single stock, that would be less than 0.2% of Sigma's market cap, or less than 0.1% of tiny-cap fiber-optics expert Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN).

Both Infinera and Sigma Designs are official Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendations. That newsletter service has lots of promising ideas that are too small-time for Berkshire to bother with but just right for an individual investor. Grab a free 30-day trial pass right now to see the market-beaters you've been missing and that Buffett can't touch.

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