Markets have had a bumpier ride lately, even with records still being set throughout 2026. When headlines turn scary, most investors’ instincts point the wrong way.
One 96-year-old billionaire has been here before, more than once, and his advice from the depths of a much worse crisis is getting renewed attention right now, nearly two decades after he first wrote it.
Warren Buffett’s 2008 op-ed advice is making the rounds again
The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq Composite have all hit record highs in 2026, but returns have been stuck in the single digits since May as tech stocks wobble and rate-hike odds creep back up.
That backdrop is reviving interest in something Warren Buffett wrote nearly 18 years ago, when the stakes were far higher than a single-digit wobble.
In October 2008, with the S&P 500 down more than a third from its highs and the country deep in the Great Recession, Buffett published a New York Times op-ed titled “Buy American. I Am.”
He argued that bad news is an investor’s best friend because it lets people buy into the country’s future at a discount, according to CNBC.
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Buffett acknowledged that weaker and highly leveraged companies could face serious problems, but he said fears about the long-term health of sound businesses were overblown, predicting most would be setting “new profit records five, 10, and 20 years from now.”
History backed him up. The S&P 500 has climbed more than 1,000% from its March 2009 financial-crisis low, and the investors who kept buying through the worst of the headlines ended up capturing the bulk of that recovery, according to The Motley Fool.
The market’s current mood echoes 2026’s own volatility
Some of the same ingredients from 2008 are showing up again, just in a milder form. Rising oil prices tied to the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran have repeatedly dragged stocks lower this year, with the Dow falling 374 points on Aug. 31 after new U.S. strikes against Iran, as MarketWatch reported.
Interest rate uncertainty has added to the churn. By late August, traders were pricing in just a 32.6% chance of a September rate cut, a sharp reversal from just weeks earlier, when the market had leaned toward expecting one, based on the CME Group’s FedWatch tool cited by CCN.
Treasury market stress has piled on, too. The 30-year Treasury yield tested its highest level in nearly two decades in mid-August as fiscal concerns, inflation risks, and geopolitical tensions pushed long-term borrowing costs higher, pressuring stocks even as some sectors, such as technology, still posted solid monthly gains, according to TheStreet.
Analysts at Capital.com pointed to renewed Middle East tensions and threats over the Strait of Hormuz as the specific catalyst pushing a geopolitical risk premium back into asset prices.
Not every strategist reads the volatility as a warning sign. Evercore ISI’s Julian Emanuel has argued the odds of the S&P 500 reaching 9,000 have actually strengthened even as volatility rises, writing that more upside will be driven by more volatility in a note to clients, as reported by CNBC.
Buffett’s own 2026 actions back up the message
Buffett’s caution during the early-2026 market sell-off reflected his decades-old advice. Berkshire Hathaway held roughly $373 billion in cash and Treasury bills in early May, underscoring the company’s enormous financial flexibility.
“Three times since I’ve taken over Berkshire, it’s gone down more than 50%,” he said in a CNBC interview. “This is nothing,” he added, as TheStreet reported.
His threshold for action is more specific than reactive. “If there is a big decline, we will deploy capital,” Buffett said, making it clear that ordinary pullbacks, even ones that rattle everyday investors, are unlikely to meet Berkshire’s bar for aggressive buying.
Buffett has also flagged what concerns him about the current environment, separate from valuation levels alone. He compared today’s markets to “a church with a casino attached” at Berkshire’s annual meeting in May, pointing to the boom in short-term options trading as evidence of a heightened speculative mood.
Even so, Buffett has kept his famous rule in play, telling CNBC the best buying opportunities come “when nobody will answer their phones because the markets are collapsing.”
He described the kind of panic that can accompany a market collapse, reiterating his long-standing guidance to be greedy when others are fearful.
What Buffett’s advice means for investors
Buffett has warned for years about the specific behavior that costs investors the most. Writing in 2008 about the market’s history, he noted that the “hapless” investors were the ones who bought only when comfortable and sold the moment headlines turned scary.
He said this pattern helps explain why some people lost money, even during a century of enormous market gains.
The practical lesson holds up, regardless of what happens next. Nobody knows whether stocks keep climbing through the rest of 2026 or finally hit a real slump, but history has shown repeatedly that time in the market tends to beat attempts to time it.
Selling now to avoid a hypothetical downturn risks missing further gains if the rally continues, while staying invested through a real correction has historically rewarded patient investors once quality companies recover.
Buffett’s own track record over six decades suggests it’s simply a matter of when, not if.
Related: Warren Buffet’s Berkshire sells rebounding healthcare stock
