Warren Buffett: Only 4 Stocks I’d Touch in a 50% Market Drop

Let me tell you exactly what I would do if I woke up tomorrow and the stock market had crashed 50 percent. Not what I might do, not what I would consider doing, what I would actually do. Because I have lived through this scenario multiple times. I have seen markets cut in half. I have watched trillions of dollars evaporate in weeks. And every single time I have done the same thing, I have bought aggressively while everyone else was selling in panic. The crash of 2008, the crash of 2000, the crash of 1987, the crash of 1973 and 74. I was there for all of them. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that those moments of maximum fear, those moments when it feels like the financial world is ending, those are the moments that create generational wealth. But here is what most people do not understand. You cannot wait until the crash happens to figure out what you want to buy. By then, it is too late. Your emotions take over. Fear clouds your judgment. You freeze when you should be acting. That is why today, right now, while markets are calm and your thinking is clear, I am going to share with you the only four stocks I would buy if markets crashed 50 percent tomorrow. These are not speculative bets. These are not hot tips. These are businesses I have studied for decades, businesses with competitive advantages. So durable that a 50 percent price decline would be a gift from the investing gods. And I am going to explain exactly why each one makes the cut so that when the next crash inevitably comes, you will know exactly what to do. Before I reveal these four stocks, let me take you back to a moment that shaped everything I know about buying during crashes. It was October of 2008. Lehman Brothers had just collapsed. The financial system was on the brink of complete meltdown. Banks were failing. Credit markets were frozen. The Dow Jones had dropped from over 14,000 to under 8,000 in just over a year. And it was still falling. I remember sitting in my office in Omaha watching the chaos unfold on television. Every expert, every talking head, every financial professional was predicting disaster. They said we were heading into another Great Depression. They said the banking system would collapse. They said capitalism itself was in danger. And you know what I did? I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times. The headline was simple. Buy American. People thought I had lost my mind. They said, Warren, the world is ending. How can you be buying stocks right now? Do you not see what is happening? But I saw something they could not see. I saw that American businesses would still be operating in 10 years, in 20 years, in 50 years. I saw that people would still drink Coca-Cola and use credit cards and need insurance. I saw that the fear was temporary, but the value was permanent. And I was right. If you had bought stocks in October of 2008 and simply held them, you would have made five, six, seven times your money over the following 15 years. The people who panicked and sold locked in their losses. The people who had the courage to buy created wealth that changed their families forever. That experience and the many experiences like it throughout my career taught me something profound about crash investing. It is not about being brave. It is not about being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. It is about having done the work beforehand. It is about knowing with deep conviction which businesses you want to own and at what prices. When you have that knowledge, buying during a crash is not scary. It is exciting. It is like walking into your favorite store and finding everything on sale at 50% off. You do not panic when prices drop. You load up the cart. So let me tell you how I think about selecting stocks to buy in a crash because this is crucial. Not every stock that drops 50% is a good buy. In fact, most of them are not. Some stocks drop 50% because the business is fundamentally broken. Some stocks drop 50% because they were wildly overvalued to begin with. Some stocks drop 50% and then drop another 50% after that because the problems are even worse than people realize the stocks I want to buy in a crash have very specific characteristics. Let me walk you through my criteria. First, the business must be nearly certain to exist and be profitable 10 years from now. This sounds obvious, but most investors ignore it completely. They buy whatever has dropped the most without asking whether the company will even survive. In a crash, weak companies go bankrupt, companies with too much debt, companies in dying industries, companies with products. People do not need. They do not just decline temporarily. They disappear entirely. I only want to own businesses where survival is essentially guaranteed, where the products or services are so essential that people will keep buying them no matter what happens to the economy. Second, the business must have a genuine competitive mode. This means something protects it from competition. Maybe it is a brand so powerful that customers pay premium prices out of habit and emotion. Maybe it is a network effect where the product becomes more valuable as more people use it. Maybe it is cost advantages that competitors simply cannot match. Maybe it is regulatory barriers that prevent new entrants without a moat. Even a good business can be destroyed by competition over time. With a moat, a business can compound value for decades. Third, the business must generate strong free cash flow. I want companies that produce more cash than they consume, companies that can fund their own growth, pay dividends, buy back shares, and weather economic storms without needing to raise money on unfavorable terms. In a crash, capital becomes scarce and expensive. Companies that generate their own cash are in control of their destiny. Companies that depend on constant fundraising are at the mercy of market conditions. Fourth, the business must have capable and honest management. This is harder to assess than the other criteria, but it matters enormously. Over 10 or 20 years, management decisions compound just like investment returns. Good managers allocate capital wisely, treat shareholders fairly, and navigate challenges effectively. Bad managers destroy value through poor decisions. Excessive compensation and empire building. I want to partner with managers. I trust fifth, and this is critical for crash. Buying specifically, the stock must be trading at a price that offers a significant margin of safety in a crash. Even great businesses can get cut in half. But if you buy a great business at a price well below its intrinsic value, time is on your side. The value will eventually be recognized. You can afford to be patient. You can afford to be wrong about the timing. The margin of safety protects you from permanent loss, even if things get worse before they get better. These are my five filters. And when I apply them rigorously, very few stocks make the cut. Most businesses fail at least one of these tests. But the businesses that pass all five, those are the ones I want to own in a crash. Those are the ones where a 50% price decline is not a warning sign, but an invitation. Now, let me tell you about the four specific stocks I would buy. The first stock I would buy if markets crash 50% is Apple. Now, I know what you might be thinking, warned Apple has already had an incredible run. It is one of the largest companies in the world. How much upside can there be? And if it crashed 50%, would that not mean something is seriously wrong? Let me address those concerns directly. Apple is not just a technology company. Apple is one of the finest businesses ever created in the history of, and I do not say that lightly. I have studied thousands of companies over seven decades. I have seen great businesses and I have seen pretenders. Apple is the real thing. The iPhone is not just a product. It is the center of over a billion people's digital lives. Think about that. Over 1 billion people carry an iPhone with them everywhere they go. They wake up with it. They go to sleep with it. They check it hundreds of times per Dalton, Dalton Y. And they chose to pay a premium price for this device, even though cheaper alternatives exist. That tells you something profound about the value Apple creates. People are not buying iPhones because they have to. They are buying iPhones because they want to, because the experience is superior, because the ecosystem is so integrated that switching would be painful, because the brand represents something they want to be associated with. This is not a commodity business where the lowest price wins. This is a business built on emotional connection, on ecosystem lock, on continuous innovation that keeps customers loyal for life. But the iPhone is just the beginning of why Apple would be my first purchase in a crash. What really excites me is the services business. Every month, Apple collects money from over a billion people. iCloud storage fees, Apple Music subscriptions, App Store purchases, Apple Television Plus subscriptions, Apple Pay transaction fees, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness, Apple News. The services revenue is recurring, high margin, and growing faster than the hardware business. 10 years ago, services was a small part of today. It generates over $80 billion per year in revenue. And it is still in the early stages as Apple adds more services, as more people join the ecosystem, as existing users spend more. This revenue stream will continue to compound. This is the most valuable kind of revenue. It is predictable. It is sticky. It is high margin. And it creates enormous shareholder value. Now, why would Apple crash 50%? Probably because of some macroeconomic event, some global crisis, some general panic that drags down all stocks, regardless of quality. That is exactly the kind of crash where you want to be buying. The business would not be impaired. iPhone users would not suddenly switch to Android because the stock market crashed. Services subscribers would not cancel their iCloud storage. The ecosystem would remain intact. You would simply be getting a piece of this extraordinary business at half price. Let me put some numbers on this. Apple generates over $100 billion in free cash flow annually. $100 billion at a 50% lower stock price. You would be buying that cash flow at a dramatically lower multiple. And Apple uses that cash flow to benefit shareholders. Massive buyback programs that reduce the share count every year. Growing dividends that reward patient owners. And the cash pile gives them flexibility to invest in whatever opportunities emerge. Whether that is artificial intelligence, augmented reality, healthcare technology or something. We cannot even imagine yet. If Apple crashed 50% tomorrow, I would back up the truck. I would buy as much as I could. Not because I am speculating on a quick recovery. Because I would be acquiring a piece of one of the greatest businesses ever built at a price that offers exceptional long-term returns. The second stock I would buy in a 50% crash is Visa. Most people think of Visa as a credit card company. They think Visa lends money to consumers and makes money on interest payments. That is completely wrong. Visa does not lend money. Visa does not take credit risk. Visa is something far better. Visa is a toll road. Every time someone swipes a Visa card anywhere in the world, Visa takes a small percentage of the transaction. Not the credit risk. Just a fee for processing the payment. The banks that issue Visa cards take the credit risk. The merchants who accept Visa cards pay the fees. Visa just sits in the middle. Collecting tolls on trillions of dollars of transactions flowing across its network every year. Think about the beauty of this business model. Visa does not need to build factories. Visa does not need to manage inventory. Visa does not need to worry about customers not paying their bills. Visa just needs to maintain its network and watch the money flow through. The operating margins are extraordinary. Over 60% of revenue drops to operating income. That is a level of profitability that almost no other business can match. And the growth runway is enormous. The world is still in the early stages of shifting from cash to electronic payments. In developed markets like the United States and Europe, maybe 60 to 70% of transactions are electronic. But in emerging markets in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in Latin America, the vast majority of transactions are still done in cash. As these economies develop, as more people join the banking system, as more merchants accept electronic payments, Visa's transaction volume will continue to grow for decades. Visa also benefits from inflation. When prices go up, the value of transactions goes up. Visa's percentage fee is based on the transaction amount. So inflation automatically increases Visa's revenue without the company having to do anything. In an inflationary environment that destroys the value of fixed income investments, Visa's revenue grows automatically. The competitive moat around Visa is massive. There are only two major global payment networks, Visa and MasterCard. Together, they process the vast majority of card transactions worldwide. Building a competing network would require convincing millions of merchants to accept a new card, convincing billions of consumers to carry a new card, and convincing thousands of banks to issue a new card. The chicken and egg problem is nearly impossible to solve. Merchants accept Visa because consumers carry Visa. Consumers carry Visa because merchants accept Visa. New entrants cannot break into this cycle. Yes, there are newer payment technologies. Digital wallets, buy now, pay later, cryptocurrency. But what most people miss is that these technologies usually run on top of the existing card networks. When you pay with Apple Pay, the underlying transaction still goes through Visa or MasterCard. When you use PayPal, it is often connected to a Visa or MasterCard. The new technologies are not replacing the networks. They are adding transaction volume to the networks. If Visa crashed 50% in a market panic, you would be buying one of the highest quality businesses in the world at a significant discount. A business with 60% operating margins, a business growing revenue at double digits, a business with decades of runway as the world shifts to electronic payments, a business with a moat so wide that no competitor can realistically challenge it. That is the kind of opportunity I dream about. The third stock I would buy in a 50% crash is Costco. Now, this might surprise you. Costco is a retailer. Retail is supposed to be a terrible business. Low margins, intense competition, vulnerable to e-commerce disruption. Why would I want to own a retailer? Because Costco is not a normal retailer. Costco is a membership business disguised as a warehouse store. And understanding this distinction is the key to understanding why Costco is one of my favorite businesses. Most retailers make money by marking up products. They buy something for $10, sell it for $15, and pocket the $5 difference. This model has low margins because competition forces everyone to match prices. If one store charges too much, customers go somewhere else. Costco operates completely differently. Costco barely marks up its products at all. The average markup is only about 11% compared to 25% to 30% at typical retailers. Costco is not trying to make money on the merchandise. Costco is trying to offer such incredible value that customers feel compelled to pay the annual membership fee. And that membership fee is where Costco makes almost all of its profit. Think about what this means. Costco has over 60 million households paying membership fees. The renewal rate is over 90%. 90% of members renew every single year. That is subscription, like recurring revenue, with almost no marginal cost to serve. Once you pay your membership, Costco does not need to spend more money to keep you. They just need to keep offering great value. So you renew next year. This business model creates a virtuous cycle that competitors cannot replicate. Because Costco operates on razor-thin merchandise margins, they can offer the lowest prices because they offer the lowest prices customers join and renew memberships. Because customers pay membership fees, Costco can operate on razor-thin merchandise margins. It is a self-reinforcing loop that has been compounding for decades. Costco is also virtually immune to e-commerce disruption. Amazon cannot replicate the Costco experience. You cannot sell giant packages of toilet paper in cases of wine and rotisserie chickens and prescription drugs and gasoline and eye exams. Through a website, the treasure hunt experience of walking through a Costco warehouse, discovering unexpected deals, loading up a cart with bulk purchases. This cannot be digitized. Costco's $100 rotisserie chickens are lost leaders that drive traffic. Their $1.50 hot dog and soda combo has not changed price since 1985. These are strategic assets that build customer loyalty in ways that pure e-commerce cannot match. The customer demographics are incredible. Costco members tend to be affluent, educated, and loyal. They shop at Costco not because they have to, but because they genuinely enjoy the experience and appreciate the value. These are not price-sensitive customers who will switch for a slightly better deal. These are customers who have incorporated Costco into their lifestyle. Management has been exceptional for decades. They think long-term. They greet employees well-paying, above-market wages, and providing good benefits which reduces turnover and improves service. They resist the temptation to raise prices or cut quality to boost short-term profits. They have earned the trust of their members through consistent execution over decades. If Costco crashed 50%, it would not be because the business was broken. Costco's membership renewal rates do not decline because the stock market crashes. People still need to buy groceries and household goods. The business would keep humming along, collecting membership fees, serving loyal customers, compounding value. You would simply be getting this wonderful business at a much lower price. The fourth and final stock I would buy in a 50% crash is Berkshire Hathaway. Yes, my own company. And before you think this is self-serving, let me explain exactly why Berkshire would be one of my top choices in a crash scenario. Berkshire Hathaway is not really a stock. It is a collection of over 70 operating businesses, plus a massive portfolio of publicly traded stocks, plus over $300 billion in cash and short-term investments. When you buy Berkshire, you are buying insurance companies like GEICO and General Re. You are buying a railroad that moves goods across America. You are buying an energy company with utilities and pipelines. You are buying See's Candies and Dairy Queen and Fruit of the Loom and Benjamin Moore and Duracell. You are buying Steaks and Apple and Coca-Cola and American Express and Bank of America. This diversification is important in a crash scenario. Some businesses do better in recessions. Some do worse by owning a collection of businesses across many industries. Berkshire's overall earnings are more stable than any single company. The insurance businesses actually benefit from market crashes because Berkshire has cash available to write policies when competitors are impaired. The operating businesses keep generating cash regardless of stock market conditions. But the real advantage Berkshire has in a crash is the cash over $300 billion sitting on the balance sheet, waiting to be deployed in a 50% market crash. When other companies are struggling to survive, when credit markets are frozen, when everyone is desperate for capital, Berkshire can be the buyer of last resort. Berkshire can make deals on terms that are incredibly favorable. We did this in 2008, investing in Goldman Sachs and General Electric at terms that generated billions in profits. We can do it again. This optionality is enormously valuable. Most companies have to sell assets in a crash to raise cash. Berkshire can buy assets in a crash because it has cash. This asymmetry means Berkshire often emerges from crashes even stronger than before, having acquired businesses and made investments at bargain prices. There is also no debt to worry about. Berkshire's balance sheet is rock solid. There is no scenario where Berkshire cannot meet its obligations. There is no risk of bankruptcy or forced asset sales. This safety allows me to be aggressive when others are defensive. The management succession is now in place. Greg Abel is ready to take over as CEO the culture of rational capital allocation, of long-term thinking, of integrity and shareholder focus. This culture is embedded in the organization. It does not depend on any single person. If Berkshire crashed 50%, you would be buying a company with over $300 billion in cash at a lower price than the cash alone. You would be getting the 70 operating businesses essentially for free. You would be getting the stock portfolio for free. This is the kind of mathematical absurdity that sometimes happens in crashes where prices disconnect completely from intrinsic value. When that happens, you buy. Now let me bring this all together because choosing these four stocks is not really about the specific companies. It is about the principles of crash investing. And if you understand why I chose Apple and Visa and Costco and Berkshire, you understand how to evaluate any opportunity when markets decline sharply. The common thread across all four businesses is durability. Each of these companies will exist and thrive no matter what happens in the broader economy. iPhones will still sell. Card transactions will still process. People will still shop at Costco. Berkshire's operating businesses will still function. A crash does not impair these businesses. It just changes the price at which you can buy them. The second common thread is competitive advantage. Each of these businesses has something that protects it from competition. Apple has its ecosystem and brand. Visa has its network effects and scale. Costco has its membership model and value proposition. Berkshire has its diversification and balance sheet strength. These advantages compound over time. The longer you hold, the wider the moat becomes. The third common thread is cash generation. Each of these businesses produces significant free cash flow. They do not need to raise capital to grow. They can fund their own expansion, reward shareholders with dividends and buybacks, and weather economic storms without distress. Cash generation is the ultimate measure of business quality. The fourth common thread is management quality. Each of these companies is run by people who think like owners, who allocate capital wisely, who prioritize long-term value over short-term metrics. Management matters enormously over long time periods. You want partners you can trust. Let me address something important. Some of you might be wondering, should I wait for a crash to start investing? Absolutely not. Trying to time the market is a fool's errand. Nobody can predict when crashes will happen. If you sit on cash waiting for a 50% decline, you might wait years or even decades. You might miss enormous gains while waiting for a crash that does not come. The right approach is to invest consistently in quality businesses at reasonable prices, build positions over time, and when crashes do happen, be prepared to invest more aggressively. That is the key insight. You do not have to be all in or all out. You can have a normal investment posture during normal times and shift to a more aggressive posture during crashes. This requires having some cash available. This requires having a watch list of businesses you want to own. This requires having the emotional fortitude to act, when everyone else is panicking. I keep coming back to this point because it is so important. The biggest obstacle to successful crash investing is not knowledge. It is temperament. When markets crash 50%, the news is uniformly terrible. Every headline screams disaster. Every expert predicts further declines. Your own portfolio is showing massive losses. Every instinct tells you to sell to get out to protect what you have left. But that is exactly when you need to be buying. The moment of maximum pessimism is the moment of maximum opportunity. Not because you are smarter than everyone else. Not because you can predict the future. But because you have done the work beforehand. Because you know which businesses you want to own. Because you understand that great businesses continue operating regardless of stock prices. Because you recognize that crashes are temporary, but value is permanent. I have been investing for over 70 years. I have made a lot of money, but I did not make that money by being clever about market timing. I made it by owning great businesses for long periods of time. I made it by being greedy when others were fearful. I made it by having the patience to let compound interest work its magic. The four stocks I have shared with you today, Apple, Visa, Costco, and Berkshire Hathaway. They represent the best of American business. They have competitive advantages that will last for decades. They generate enormous amounts of cash. They are run by capable people. And in a crash when their prices drop 50%, they become the opportunity of a lifetime. But here is what I want you to understand. The specific stocks matter less than the principles behind the selection. If you can identify businesses that are durable, that have competitive moats, that generate free cash flow, that have great management, and that are available at prices that offer a margin of safety, you will do well as an investor. Whether you own these exact four stocks or different companies that meet the same criteria, the results will be similar over long periods. Crashes will come. They always do. The history of markets is a history of periodic panics where prices decline sharply and investors lose their minds. Some of these crashes are triggered by financial crises, some by geopolitical events, some by unexpected shocks that nobody saw coming. The specific trigger does not matter. What matters is how you respond. Will you panic and sell at the bottom, locking in your losses, will you freeze and do nothing, missing the opportunity, or will you have the preparation and the courage to buy aggressively, acquiring wonderful businesses at bargain prices? The choice is yours. But let me tell you from seven decades of experience, the investors who build real wealth are the ones who buy during crashes. They are the ones who see opportunity where others see disaster. They are the ones who act when everyone else is paralyzed by fear. Let me share something else that most investors get wrong about crash investing. They think they need to catch the exact bottom. They think if they buy when the market is down 40% and it goes down another 10%, they have made a mistake. This is completely backwards thinking. If you buy a wonderful business at a wonderful price, it does not matter if the price goes a little lower after you buy. What matters is where the business will be in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years. The difference between buying at the absolute bottom and buying 10% above the bottom is essentially meaningless. But the difference between buying during a crash and not buying at all, that is enormous. That is life-changing. I have never caught the exact bottom of any crash. Not once in 70 years of investing, I bought during the crash of 2008. But prices kept falling for months after my purchases. I bought during the dot-com crash, but prices declined further before recovering. Every single time, I bought too early according to short-term price action. And every single time, those purchases turned out to be incredible investments. Because I was focused on value, not on timing. This is the mindset you need to develop. Stop trying to be perfect. Stop waiting for the all-clear signal. There is no all-clear signal at the bottom of a crash. At the bottom, everything looks hopeless. The news is terrible. The experts are predicting more declines. Your stomach is in knots. That is exactly when you should be buying. If you wait until things look better, you will have already missed most of the recovery. Let me also address the question of how much to buy during a crash. This depends on your individual situation. But I can share some principles. First, never invest money you might need in the next five years. Crashes can last longer than you expect. And you do not want to be forced to sell at low prices because you need the cash. Second, invest incrementally rather than all at once. If the market drops 50%, do not put all your available capital in on day one. Buy some, wait. If prices drop further, buy more. This way you benefit from averaging in at different prices. Third, maintain enough liquidity to take advantage of extreme opportunities. The best deals often come at moments of maximum panic. When sellers are desperate and buyers are scarce, having cash available during these moments is enormously valuable. I want to talk about the psychological preparation required for crash investing because this is where most people fail. It is easy to say you will buy when stocks are down 50%. It is much harder to actually do it when you are living through the crash. Your brain is wired to avoid pain. Buying stocks during a crash feels painful because you are likely to see immediate losses. Your portfolio might drop further. You might feel stupid for buying when everyone else is selling. Every evolutionary instinct tells you to run away from danger. And a crashing market triggers those danger instincts. The way to overcome this is through preparation and conviction. Preparation means doing the work beforehand. Know exactly which businesses you want to own. Understand their competitive advantages. Calculate rough estimates of their intrinsic value. Have a plan for how much you will buy at different price levels. When the crash comes, you do not have to think. You just execute the plan you already made. Conviction comes from understanding. If you truly understand why Apple or Visa or Costco or Berkshire are great businesses, you will not be shaken by temporary price declines. You will recognize that the underlying value has not changed. You will see the crash as a gift rather than a threat. But this conviction only comes from deep knowledge. Surface-level understanding evaporates under pressure. Only genuine understanding survives the emotional storm of a crash. Let me tell you what not to do during a crash. Because avoiding mistakes is just as important as making good investments. Do not sell your existing holdings just because prices have dropped. If you owned a great business at higher prices, it is an even better value at lower prices. Selling locks in losses and denies you the opportunity for recovery. Do not try to get clever with market timing. Do not attempt to sell before the crash gets worse and buy back at the bottom. This sounds great in theory, but almost never works in practice. You will sell too late and buy too early or sell too early and watch prices recover without you. Do not abandon your investment plan because of fear. If you had a sensible long-term strategy before the crash, that strategy is still sensible during the crash, probably more sensible because prices are lower. Do not listen to the doom-mongers and panic merchants during crashes. The most bearish voices get the most attention. People who predict total collapse become celebrities. But they are almost always wrong. The world does not end. Markets recover. Businesses continue operating. Life goes on. Do not invest money. You cannot afford to lose. This should be obvious, but it is worth emphasizing. Crashes can last longer and go deeper than anyone expects. If you invest money you need for rent or food or emergencies, you might be forced to sell at the worst possible time. Only invest money you can genuinely afford to leave invested for years. Do not concentrate everything in a single stock. Even wonderful businesses can face unexpected challenges. Diversification across several high-quality companies provides protection against the unknown. Do not borrow money to invest during a crash. Leverage can destroy you. If you borrow to buy stocks and prices drop further, you might face margin calls that force you to sell at the bottom. This is how people go broke during crashes. Stay away from leverage. One more thing I want to emphasize. The four stocks I have discussed today are my choices based on my analysis and my criteria. Your choices might be different and that is fine. What matters is not that you own the exact same stocks I would own. What matters is that you apply the same principles. Look for durable businesses. Look for competitive advantages. Look for strong cash generation. Look for quality management. Look for reasonable prices. If you find businesses that meet these criteria, you will do well regardless of whether they are the same businesses I have chosen. The goal is not to copy anyone. The goal is to develop your own ability to evaluate businesses and recognize value. When you can do that, you do not need to rely on anyone else's stock picks. You can generate your own ideas and have the conviction to act on them. This self-reliance is ultimately what separates successful investors from the crowd. You do not need to be a financial genius to succeed at this. You do not need to have inside information or sophisticated models. You just need to own great businesses, hold them for long periods, and buy more when prices decline dramatically. That is the formula. It has worked for me since 1942. It will keep working as long as markets exist. So the next time you see headlines about a market crash, the next time you watch your portfolio decline sharply, the next time everyone around you is panicking and predicting doom, remember what I have told you today. Remember the four stocks. Remember the principles behind them. Remember that crashes are opportunities, not disasters. And act accordingly. Your future self will thank you.