It was a manic Friday (April 29) with the Nasdaq marking its worst monthly drop since 2008.

Friday saw huge sell offs with Amazon, Apple, Google Netflix all tanking with investors fleeing in droves.

The S&P 500 benchmark dropped 8.8 per cent in April. Adding to the panic is the likelihood that the Fed will raise interest rates next week.

Speaking at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, Warren Buffett, credited as the world’s greatest investor, ‘The Oracle of Omaha’, and the man who passed on both Amazon and Tesla, prophetically said: “We will always have a lot of cash. It’s like oxygen, it’s there all the time but if it disappears for a few minutes, it’s all over.”

Turning his attention to the stock market, he quipped that Wall Street turns the stock market into a gambling parlour.

“Wall Street makes money, one way or another, catching the crumbs that fall off the table of capitalism,” Buffett said.

“They don’t make money unless people do things, and they get a piece of them. They make a lot more money when people are gambling than when they are investing,” declared the investment guru.

The average return of the S&P for the past 50 years is still only 10 per cent.

Buffett, turning to the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, his closest partner and right-hand man, Charlie Munger: “Charlie, do you have any comment on how something as crazy as this could have happened?”

Replied Munger: “It’s amazing the amount of speculation we have. We have computers with algorithms trading against other computers. We have people who know nothing about stocks being advised by stock brokers who know even less – but they understand the commission though!

“It’s an incredible, crazy situation and it is weird we even got a system where all the equivalency of casino activity is mixed up with a lot of legitimate long-term investment. I don’t think any wise country would have wanted this outcome. Why would you want your country’s stocks to be traded on a casino basis just like the people who play craps and roulette in the casino? I think it’s crazy, but it happened, and it is seen as being respectable -not with me, but other people.”