At Saturday's annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, the company's chairman and CEO Warren Buffett fielded a question as to whether the recent shakiness had presented Berkshire with opportunities to buy stock. Buffett rejected the premise. "What has happened in the last 30 to 45 days, 100 days, whatever this period has been, is really nothing," he said.

It hasn't felt like nothing for investors. Uncertainty over inflation, trade wars and President Donald Trump's capricious tariff policies have resulted in a bouncy market that briefly flirted with bear territory, defined as a drop of 20% from recent highs. As of Tuesday afternoon, the S&P 500 sat about 9% below its February peak.

Buffett pointed out the sorts of downturns that present real opportunities for investors are quite a bit scarier than what's happening now, reminding the audience in Omaha, Nebraska, that the Dow Jones Industrial average had fallen from 381 points to 42 in September 1929. "That's like going from 100 to 11," he said. "This has not been a dramatic bear market or anything of the sort," Buffett said.

"I've had about 17,000 or 18,000 trading days. There have been plenty of periods that are dramatically different than this." If what's been going on in the market has you feeling panic, you may need to rethink your strategy, Buffett added.

"If it makes a difference to you whether your stocks are down 15% or not, you need to get a somewhat different investment philosophy because the world is not going to adapt to you," he said. "You're going to have to adapt to the world."