Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and fan of value stocks, offered up the following advice in 1986 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was south of 2000, “Occasional outbreaks of those two super-contagious diseases, fear and greed, will forever occur in the investment community. The timing of these epidemics will be unpredictable. And the market aberrations produced by them will be equally unpredictable, both as to duration and degree. Therefore, we never try to anticipate the arrival or departure of either disease. Our goal is more modest: We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy, and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”

Obviously, with the Dow above 30000 today, the long-term trend for equities has been significantly higher, especially if dividends and their reinvestment are included, though there have been plenty of scary sell-offs along the way.

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