Weakness in the job market, changing expectations for the Federal Reserve's next move, worries about a hard landing, risks of prolonged inflation, and a looming presidential election. None of this macroeconomic stuff matters to Warren Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha, who turned 94 last week, is a firm believer that successful investing is about finding great businesses at attractive prices within your capabilities, and that everything else is just noise. “If you find a business that you understand and you like the price you're being offered, buy it,” Buffett said at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in 2012. “It doesn't matter what the headlines are, what the Federal Reserve is doing, what's happening in Europe. Buy it.” Whether buying shares in a company or an entire company, Berkshire's chairman and CEO tends to pull the trigger only when he can see the intrinsic value of the asset and understand the competition in that industry and how it will develop in the future. “If we're right about the business, macro factors don't make any difference. And if we're wrong about the business, macro factors don't save us,” he said. “We look at value, we don't look at headlines at all. … Everybody thinks we're sitting around talking about macro factors, but we're not discussing macro factors.” Investors are facing greater volatility as passive index funds and quantitative momentum investing have skyrocketed in popularity. These investment vehicles, which track benchmarks or use trend-following models, put most of the buying and selling decisions in the hands of automated machines. Some argue that this makes the market more sensitive to headlines and more susceptible to sharp price fluctuations. “America is not going away” Buffett, who studied under Benjamin Graham, known as the father of value investing at Columbia University, has ignored negative headlines even during the worst periods in American history, from the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, he's known for taking advantage of the turmoil to buy assets that are suddenly on sale. The legendary investor famously penned an op-ed for The New York Times in October 2008, as the markets crashed amid the deepening mortgage crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. His message was to be greedy when others are fearful, because “America isn't going away, stocks are cheap.” “There's always good news and bad news out there. Which gets the most emphasis depends on the mood of the people, the newspaper editors and so on,” he said in 2012.
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