7 ms·

To help adopt a sober approach, it's worth watching this interview with Warren Buffett who shares his thinking re: market and Coronavirus. https://www.youtube.

• ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
  This makes sense if you have huge quantity of cash where leverage is not an issue. With limited cash, you have to think very different from Warren.
  • chenster 7y ago
    I don't disagree. If you are in it for the long term, there's really nothing to worry about. The market eventually will bounce back. It always does.
    • AgentOrange1234 7y ago
      Well, so far...
      • scottlegrand2 7y ago
        And if it doesn't hopefully you stocked up on toilet paper and purell to trade in the new hellscape economy...
        • throwaway743 7y ago
          Banking on bottlecaps
        • infinite8s 7y ago
          And ammo and soap.
          • chenster 7y ago
            Toilet paper!
        • RhodesianHunter 7y ago
          The market not bouncing back doesn't necessarily imply Armageddon. Just look at the Nikkei.
  • arsome 7y ago
    That may make sense if you're thinking about short term cash, but for longer term investments it still holds up.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• coliveira 7y ago
  Two things make Warren different: (1) he is a professional money manager, which means that he is investing other peoples money. (2) because of (1), he never needed the money he is investing. It is much easier to have long time frames when you're investing money that is not yours.
  • xiphias2 7y ago
    Actually the thinking still holds: it’s better to have some cash besides your business if you would really need it that soon, or be prepared to take out money from your business when it’s cash strapped (I’m doing the 2nd actually, but I’m OK with it, and am prepared for it emotionally).
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • njarboe 7y ago
    Warren Buffet still owns 6% of Berkshire Hathaway. Maybe a more correct statement would be "If you have money you don't immediately need to spend, it is much easier to have a long time frame for investing". Hopefully the money in people's retirement accounts is this type of money. Most money managers have extremely short time frame investment horizons and are just looking to get their 2 and 20.
  • karaterobot 7y ago
    Even if that were true, he's still completely right, and this advice is still good! What really makes him different is that he consistently follows the common sense advice the rest of us nod along with and then ignore.
• piinthesky 7y ago
  So invest in companies that will benefit from Coronavirus. I'd probably short retirement home businesses, long on lab technology businesses and long on pension & insurance funds as it seems to kill off the elderly and sick, so their profits should increase once this has died down. Whats unknown is how low this will go. Spanish flu lasted 3years, infected 27% of the population and there was just 2billion people back then unlike today with 8billion people, better transport and higher density's of people. Off set the falls with better technology and knowledge. So what stock do you buy and at what price, what do you short and at what price?
• mrtweetyhack 7y ago
  Easy for Warren to say. He really does buy the business because he buys enough stock to have a say in the company.
• sameerds 7y ago
  From a retail investor's point of view, both approaches are wrong. The retail investor can neither "play" the game of stocks, nor understand what it means to buy a business. Not because there is anything magical about either, but because the retail investor has a life too, and would rather focus on their own work for their actual income. The correct way to look at stock investment is to say "I bought a stake in the future of the world's industry". And that makes you realize what a mind-bogglingly large gamble this is with your savings. People simply have faith that human life will keep improving over the long term, and hence the value of the world's industry will also keep going up irrespective of short term rises and falls.
  • virgilp 7y ago
    > that makes you realize what a mind-bogglingly large gamble this is with your savings. Is it a gamble, really? I can't fathom what I could do with my money, should the world economy go to the gutter, big time. Holding cash surely won't help - cash can become worthless, did so many times in the past. Hard assets might help, but it's very tough to know which ones (cans of food maybe, but really? How much can you "invest" in it? And it's really just investing in the apocalypse... you're making a very shitty scenario slightly less shitty for yourself, _maybe_). The thing is, all we can really do is hope that the future of the world's economy is good; if it isn't, there's really no rock-solid way to isolate yourself from the bad outcomes. Regardless how much you own now.
    • NateEag 7y ago
      I'd argue that investing in skills and training is the best preparation for apocalypse scenarios. I have a younger sister in medical school, and as I say to her about the debt she's taken on for the degree, "Even if there's a nuclear war and the economy and technology evaporate, people will want to keep you alive for your knowledge. They might break your ankles and chain you up to keep access to your knowledge and skills, but you'll be fed even when almost no one else is." Not that preparing for an apocalypse is necessarily a great use of time - just saying that skills are a better asset for it than physical goods and resources.