Warren Buffett says coronavirus and plummeting oil prices are a 'one-two punch' to markets, but not as scary as 2008
- Warren Buffett said that Monday's market rout was not as scary as the great financial crisis in 2008 or the collapse in 1987 in an interview Tuesday with Yahoo Finance.
- Still, the combination of coronavirus and a plunge in oil prices was a "big one-two punch" to markets, Buffett said.
- The virus shouldn't affect what people do in stocks, Buffett said in a February interview with CNBC. But, " in terms of the human race, it's scary stuff when you have a pandemic."
- Read more on Business Insider.
Warren Buffett, the famed value investor and "Oracle of Omaha" said in a Tuesday interview with Yahoo Finance that Monday's market rout over coronavirus and plunging oil prices is not as scary as the great financial crisis in 2008.
"The combination, actually, of the coronavirus and what happened with oil over the weekend, that's a big one-two punch," said Buffett on Tuesday.
Still, the 2008 market collapse was "much more scary, by far," than anything that happened on Monday, Buffett said. He also said that Monday's market crash wasn't as bad as the October crash of 1987.
US stocks had their worst performance since the 2008 financial crisis on Monday. The S&P 500 closed 7.6% lower while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 7.8%, nearly ending the longest bull market in history. On the same day, oil prices fell more than 30% after an oil price war erupted between OPEC and its allies over the weekend.
"If you stick around long enough you'll see everything in markets," Buffett, 89, said. "But the markets, if you have to be open second by second, they react to news in a big-time way."
In an interview with CNBC in February, Buffett warned that the coronavirus outbreak could affect Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting in May.
While the virus shouldn't affect what people do in stocks, Buffett said, "in terms of the human race, it's scary stuff when you have a pandemic."
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