Warren Buffett says 'humans love to gamble' as he takes digs at a speculative market — so why do investors ignore him?

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Warren Buffett has made billions picking stocks over the course of his life.

But these days, he says, the market is changing. Instead of investors focusing on long-term returns, speculative trading is becoming predominant.

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Despite the major indices hitting record highs, Buffett, in an interview with CNBC, aimed criticism at retail investors who chase the hot stock of the moment and one-day options trading, likening it to gambling (1).

“There are times when opportunities are just thrown at you so fast you can’t, you know, it’s unbelievable,” Buffett said. “And then there’s other times when you’re very, very lucky if you find one thing in a couple of years. And it should always be that the, the latter is what prevails. But since humans love to gamble so much, there’s more money in, in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors.”

Quick turns versus long looks

Buffett has long been an advocate of the buy-and-hold philosophy when it comes to stocks. Find a company with good fundamentals that are undervalued and buy into it, he has advocated, then wait for it (and, when applicable, help it) grow into the powerhouse you believe it can be.

Another cardinal rule: Don’t invest in an industry or business you don’t thoroughly understand. That approach led Berkshire Hathaway to grow to a $1 trillion business.

That’s a different approach than many investors today, particularly individuals who tend to follow the herd, buying shares of the hot stock of the moment (i.e. SpaceX, Micron or GameStop). Many of those investors lose money.

Perhaps partly because of this, Buffett, in the past, has called the stock market “a church with a casino attached.”

Against the tide

While some investors might shrug off Buffett’s warning, it wouldn’t be the first time his warning has gone unheeded.

During the run-up in tech stocks, as Internet firms saw explosive growth in the late 90s, Buffett refused to invest in them, which made many critics write him off (2).

However, when the dotcom bubble burst, Buffett’s value soared.

While he’s known widely as the Oracle of Omaha for his stock picking prowess, Buffett told CNBC a lot of his success has been due to luck, though maybe not the kind you would imagine.

“I have been lucky and healthy to get to 95 … and, fortunately, I got exposed, partly accidentally, to what I liked to do very early on,” Buffett said (3), referring to early investing lessons given to him by his father, who owned a stock brokerage. “That was just an accident. If my father had been a plumber, I would not have had the same advantage I had. So I was incredibly lucky.”

Read More: Millionaires under 43 hold only 25% of their wealth in stocks. Here’s where their money is actually going

Buffett’s #1 strategy

If there’s one lesson Buffett has repeated throughout his investing career, it’s that patience often outperforms prediction. Instead of chasing headlines or constantly reshuffling your portfolio, he has recommended a strategy that’s remarkably simple.

“Consistently buy an S&P 500 low-cost index fund,” Warren Buffett said in an interview, adding “I think it’s the thing that makes the most sense practically all of the time” (4).

That philosophy becomes especially valuable during periods of uncertainty, when market volatility and nonstop financial news can push investors toward emotional decisions.

“The temptation when you see bad headlines in newspapers is to say, well, maybe I should skip a year or something. Just keep buying,” he said. “American business is going to do fine over time, so you know the investment universe is going to do very well.”

Rather than trying to predict the next rally, making regular contributions can help smooth out the ups and downs through dollar cost averaging. Even modest investments can snowball over time. Investing just $30 a week could grow to more than $93,000 over 20 years, assuming a 10% average annual return (5).

Platforms like Acorns allow you to turn your spare change from everyday purchases into an investment opportunity.

All you have to do is link your cards and Acorns will round up each purchase to the nearest dollar, investing the difference — your spare change — into a diversified portfolio of ETFs managed by experts at leading investment firms like Vanguard and BlackRock.

You can invest in an index ETF with as little as $5 — and, if you sign up today and set up a recurring investment, Acorns will add a $20 bonus to help you begin your investment journey.

Get advice from Wall Street veterans

Buffett has never been one to invest based on whatever happens to be generating the loudest headlines. Instead, he focuses on businesses with “long-lasting favorable economic characteristics and trustworthy managers” (6).

“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price,” he wrote in Berkshire Hathaway’s 1989 shareholder letter (7).

Finding those kinds of businesses isn’t always easy, particularly for investors who don’t have hours to analyze earnings reports and financial statements.

For investors who want to build a portfolio using similar principles but don’t have the time or experience to research companies from scratch, platforms like Moby can help.

Their team of former hedge fund analysts and experts spend hundreds of hours each week sifting through financial news and data to provide you with breaking stock recommendations.

Moby’s success speaks for itself. The platform’s stock picks have outperformed the S&P 500 index by about 11.9% over the past four years.

Even better, Moby offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can see if the service is right for you. And if you sign up for Moby Premium you get one free top stock to get you off to a good start.

Create a source of passive income

Buffett has long been a strong believer in owning assets that continue producing value no matter what the market is doing. Real estate has long fit that description.

Unlike stocks, which can swing dramatically on earnings reports or investor sentiment, housing tends to operate on a different cycle. Another advantage? Rental properties can also generate regular cash flow, creating passive income that doesn’t depend on whether the stock market is having a good year or a bad one.

While Buffett has acknowledged that real estate comes with its own challenges, he’s also described it as the kind of productive asset he loves. During Berkshire Hathaway’s 2022 annual meeting, Buffett famously said that if someone offered him “1% of all the apartment houses in the country” for $25 billion, he’d “write you a check” (8).

His reasoning is simple — the apartments are going to produce rent regardless of whether the S&P 500 is soaring or stumbling.

The downside? Owning property comes with plenty of responsibilities — from managing tenants to covering repairs and unexpected expenses.

That’s where platforms like Arrived come in.

Backed by world-class investors, including Jeff Bezos, Arrived allows you to invest in shares of vacation and rental properties, earning a passive income stream without the extra work that comes with being a landlord. And you can get started with as little as $100.

Arrived distributes any rental income generated by properties to investors monthly, allowing you to potentially set up a passive income stream without the extra work that comes with being a landlord of your own rental property.

To get started, simply browse through their selection of vetted properties, each picked for their potential appreciation and income generation.

The best part? For a limited time, when you open an account and add $1,000 or more, Arrived will credit your account with a 1% match.

Diversify like the ultra-wealthy

One of Buffett’s biggest investing lessons is that protecting wealth matters just as much as growing it. And when stock valuations begin looking stretched — especially as the Shiller P/E has soared past 40x — that’s often the time to think beyond traditional equities.

Billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates continue to invest heavily in stocks, but they also carve out a portion of their portfolios for assets that behave differently from the market.

One standout example: post-war and contemporary art, which outpaced the S&P 500 by 15% from 1995 to 2025 while showing near-zero correlation to traditional equities.

Until recently, this world was off-limits to most investors. But now, with Masterworks, you can buy fractional shares in multimillion-dollar works by icons like Banksy, Picasso and Basquiat. While art can be illiquid and typically requires a long-term hold, it offers unique portfolio diversification.

Masterworks has sold 27 artworks so far, yielding net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6% and 17.8%.*

Moneywise readers can get priority access to diversify with art: Skip the waitlist here.

*Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Investing involves risk. See important Regulation A disclosures atMasterworks.com/cd.

– With files from Chris Morris.

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Article Sources

We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see ourethics and guidelines.

CNBC (1), (3), (4), (6), (8); Yahoo! Finance (2); Berkshire Hathaway (7); Acorns (5)

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.