- Warren Buffett said in an interview with Yahoo Finance on Tuesday that Monday's market rout was not as scary as the 2008 financial crisis or the 1987 collapse.
- Still, the combination of the coronavirus outbreak and a plunge in oil prices was a "big one-two punch" to markets, Buffett said.
- The outbreak shouldn't affect what people do in stocks, Buffett said in a February interview with CNBC. But "in terms of the human race," he said, "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 the coronavirus outbreak and plunging oil prices was not as scary as the 2008 financial crisis.
"The combination, actually, of the coronavirus and what happened with oil over the weekend, that's a big one-two punch," Buffett said.
Still, the 2008 market collapse was "much more scary by far" than anything that happened on Monday, Buffett said. He also said it wasn't as bad as the crash in October 1987.
US stocks on Monday had their worst performance since the 2008 financial crisis: 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 a 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, adding, "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 said 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."