Warren Buffett doesn’t know what the near future holds for the stock market as COVID-19 ravages the global health and financial landscapes.

“I don’t know — and perhaps with a bias — I don’t believe anybody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow,” Buffett said at the 2020 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting.

The undisputed king of long-term buy-and-hold investing continued.

“I know America is going to move forward over time,” he said. “But, I don’t know for sure — and we learned this on September 10th, 2001, and we learned this a few months ago in terms of the virus — anything can happen in terms of markets”

“You can bet on America, but you kinda have to be careful about how you bet,” he added. “Simply because markets can do anything.”

[Click here for coverage of the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting.]

Buffett extended the cautionary tale, citing historical precedent

“On [October 11, 1987], markets went down 22% in one day. In 1914, they closed the stock market for about four months. After 9-11, they closed the markets for four days,” he said. “But, nobody knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Buffett delivered a bit of personal investing advice that’s served him well since a child emerging from the Great Depression.

“When I bought my first stock when I was eleven, I caught a huge, huge, huge tailwind in America,” he said. “But, it wasn’t going to blow in my direction every single day, and you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“I know America’s going to move forward after time,” he said.

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Jared Blikre is a senior producer and global markets reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @SPYJared

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