Warren Buffett has retired, but his wisdom will always provide a calm oasis in times of stock market turmoil. With the FTSE 100 ending last Friday (20 March) back below 10,000 points, this is surely one of those times.
Since hitting over 10,900 points, the FTSE 100 fell 9.3% by last week’s close. But we can ignore all the panic headlines calling this a stock market crash. Technically, that would need a 20% loss — so we’re nowhere near it. In fact, the UK’s top shares are only just getting close to a technical correction, or 10% down.
The Footsie has still climbed 14% over the past 12 months, with is around twice its long-term annual average. So is it time to panic? No chance — not after one of the best 12-months period we’ve had for share price gains in recent years.
The Sage of Omaha
Warren Buffett stepped back from Berkshire Hathaway at the end of last year. From his leadership of the company back in 1965 to the end of 2025, he rewarded Berkshire shareholders with an average annual share price gain of 19.7%. That’s some way ahead of the S&P 500 index average, of 10.5% including dividends.
In total, the S&P 500 has compounded up to a 46,000% increase over that period. But the Berkshire share price has trampled on that with a six million percent gain! And that’s through some short-term shocks too. In 2008, for example, the global banking crisis led to a 31.8% fall.
I don’t see Warren Buffett, with that track record, losing any sleep over today’s stock market wobbles. Well, actually, I could maybe picture him kept awake by the excitement of all the great companies now selling at cheaper prices.
“If you aren’t willing to own a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes,” Buffett famously said. If we buy shares today, where are they likely to be this time in 2036? Think about it like that, and worries about the next few weeks will hopefully fade.
Long-term wealth
The above chart shows the past performance of the iShares Core FTSE 100 UCITS ETF (LSE: ISF). It’s an index tracker fund which aims to replicate the FTSE 100. It charges core annual fees of only 0.07%. And it’s one of the lowest-effort ways to consider getting into stock market investing.
Doesn’t the latest dip look small compared to its five-years gains? Now, if we click the ‘All’ button, we can see a long-term upwards trend — punctuated by ups and downs along the way. On that timescale, we can barely even make out the latest March 2026 dip.
The 2008 financial crisis is the scariest part of it — and it shows even an index tracker like this is exposed to risk of losses. But the stock market has since shaken even that off, and today is considerably higher.
A tracker is never going to beat the market. But we can always add to it by considering shares in great companies at good prices during any dips — just like Warren Buffett has always urged us to do.
