Warren Buffett, Photo: ZZ-NPX-Star Max-Iipx / Associated Press / Profimedia
“No one can tell you when bad things will happen to you,” Buffett wrote in 2017. “The traffic light can go from green to red at any time, without stopping at orange.”
Even if the scholarships slide in red and the actions fall against the backdrop of a commercial war following Trump's ads on the high rates, Bershire Hathaway president Warren Buffet, advises investors to keep calm reading a certain classic poem from the 19th century.
“It cannot be said how much the actions can decrease in a short period of time,” he wrote in his 2017 letter to shareholders. But if there is a major decrease, he continued, “consider reading these lines” from Rudyard Kipling's classic poem “If”:
“If you can keep your head when everyone around you loses their own … If you can wait and not to wait … if you can trust you when all people doubt you … The earth is yours with everything in it.”
It is worth noting that Buffett wrote about the great decreases of the value market, such as the periods from 2007 to 2009, in which S&P 500 lost more than 50% of value. In fact, stock exchange corrections are quite common. There were 21 S&P 500 declins of 10% or more since 1980, with an average annual decrease of 14%, according to Baird Private Wealth Management.
“No one can tell you when they will happen,” Buffett wrote in 2017. “The traffic light can go from green to red without stopping in orange at any time,” he said. His message for individual investors is: hold on to long-term plans and continue to invest.
The investor always writes that he sees the decreases as “great opportunities”, because, from a historical point of view, it never takes long until the market resumes its upward trajectory.
His approach reminds of Buffett's advice addressed to the shareholders of 2009: “Big opportunities come rarely. When it rains gold, it takes a bucket, not a finger.” (MoneyReview.gr)
