The future may be uncertain, but Warren Buffett’s timeless advice can help you rest easier.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.13%) has been soaring for most of 2025, but many investors are feeling conflicted about the future.
Around 38% of investors feel optimistic about the market’s performance over the next six months, according to the most recent weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors, released on Nov. 5, while 36% of investors feel pessimistic.
Whether it’s concern over a potential artificial intelligence (AI) bubble burst or general worries about the state of the economy, it’s normal to feel uncertain right now. But famed investor Warren Buffett has some timeless advice for getting through rough patches.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Time in the market over timing the market
One of Warren Buffett’s most famous pieces of advice is that taking a long-term investing approach is more effective than timing the market.
In Berkshire Hathaway‘s 1991 letter to shareholders, Buffett noted that the company’s “stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.”
He made similar comments in a 2008 opinion piece for The New York Times, in which he reminded discouraged investors that the market has experienced phenomenal long-term gains despite facing brutal downturns in the short term.
Buffett wrote:
Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so, and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.
Should you invest now or wait?
Even the smartest stock market experts, including Buffett, can’t say what the market will do next week or next month. And if you time the market incorrectly, you could at best miss out on potential gains, or at worst lock in significant losses.
One of the best things you can do, then, is continue investing consistently, no matter what the market is doing. Even if stock prices plunge tomorrow, they’ll likely be far higher five or 10 years from now. By staying invested for the long haul, you can worry less about what the market might do in the immediate future.
For instance, say that you invested in an S&P 500 tracking fund in late 2007, immediately before the Great Recession began. It would have taken a few years before the index started seeing new all-time highs. But by today, you’d have earned total returns of close to 354% — more than quadrupling your money.
Of course, if you’d waited to buy until mid-2008, when prices sank to their lowest points, you could have seen larger gains. But it’s impossible to know at the moment when the market has reached its peak or trough, and by investing regularly, you’re far more likely to buy at those lower prices.
This approach is called dollar-cost averaging, and it’s one of the most effective ways to hedge against market volatility. Sometimes you’ll buy at the market’s highest prices. Other times, you’ll score pricey stocks at steep discounts. Over decades, those highs and lows should average each other out — without needing to time the market.
Market uncertainty can be daunting, and nobody knows where stock prices will be a few months from now. But by keeping a long-term outlook and simply riding out the storms, you’re far more likely to see positive total returns over time.