U.S. stocks fell sharply Monday as part of a global selloff fueled by mounting recession fears among investors.
The turmoil seems to have begun on Friday following the release of a disappointing July jobs report, which fueled concerns that the Federal Reserve has moved too slowly to cut interest rates — a move meant to alleviate some pressure on the economy. Further roiling global markets is unusual currency trading out of Japan.
The S&P 500 — a measure of the broad U.S. stock market — was down about 2% in early trading, putting it 7.5% below the index’s all-time high close on July 16. Further declines would put stocks in the territory of a correction, defined as a decline of 10% or more from the market’s peak. Notably, the S&P is still up 10.5% since the start of the year.
Fueling investor suspicion about the strength of the market: Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway disclosed over the weekend a divestiture of about half of its holding in Apple stock and an ample holding of safe-haven Treasury bills.
Unloading a hot tech stock and holding bonds? Is the Oracle of Omaha trying to tell us the end of the bull market is near?
If you’re a long-term investor, it doesn’t really matter. In fact, you’d be wise to ignore short-term ups and downs in the stock market altogether — at least according to Buffett.
“If you’re worried about corrections, you shouldn’t own stocks,” Buffett said in a 2015 interview with The Street.
“It’s a terrible mistake to think of stocks as something that bob up and down and that you should pay attention to those bobs up and down,” he said.
Keep your eyes on the long-term prize
If you’re saving for a long-term goal, such as retirement, what happens in a particular day or week or year shouldn’t be of much concern, Buffett said.
“It’s going to go down sometimes, if you own a stock, so why worry about it?” he said. “The point is to buy something you like at a price you like, and then hold it for 20 years. You should not look at it day-to-day.”
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When it comes to finding stocks he likes, Buffett is famous for value investing — buying stocks in companies that are trading at a discount to their intrinsic worth. Of course, Buffett and many other investors have dedicated their professional lives to being able to identify the market’s bargains. For the rest of us, Buffett suggests a simpler approach.
For long-term investors, owning a diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds makes “the most sense practically all of the time,” he previously told CNBC.
“Consistently buy an S&P 500 low-cost index fund,” Buffett said in a 2017 interview. “Keep buying it through thick and thin, and especially through thin.”
Now seems to be one of those thin times, at least thinner than it was last week. To follow Buffett’s advice, you’d be wise to employ a strategy known as dollar-cost averaging: investing a set amount of money into your diversified portfolio at regular intervals. In doing so, you guarantee that you buy fewer shares when stocks are expensive and more when the market goes on sale.
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