World famous billionaire investor Warren Buffett is well on course for a $1m wager win – thanks to a charity bet over which would produce better returns, the index tracker or a complex hedge fund.

Back in 2008 Buffett, the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, made a bet with American asset management firm Protege Partners that the S&P 500 index tracker would outperform a group of five hedge funds over a 10-year period.

Seven years have now past of that decade-long bet – and the Daily Telegraph reports that the latest results show Buffett (pictured below) and the index tracking fund are decisively in the lead.

In 2014 the S&P 500 tracker fund chosen to represent Buffett and the index in the bet rose by 13.6%, while the average gain for the hedge funds was just 5.6%, according to Fortune magazine, which has been monitoring the bet annually.

Since the bet was taken out, the index fund has risen 63.5%, while the hedge funds are up by about 20%.

Whoever loses the bet at the end of the 10 years has to stump up at least $1m (£660,000) to a charity chosen by the winner.

The hedge fund has admitted that Buffett is ‘likely to win’ the wager unless there is a severe fall in the stock market over the course of the next three years.

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