Weakness in the job market, shifting Federal Reserve expectations, fears of a hard landing, sticky inflation risks, and the upcoming presidential election. To Warren Buffett, none of that macroeconomic stuff matters. The 'Oracle of Omaha,' who recently turned 94, firmly believes successful investing is about finding a wonderful business within one's circle of competence at an attractive price, with everything else being just noise. 'If we find a business that we think we understand and like the price at which it's being offered, we buy it,' Buffett said at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in 2012.

'It doesn't matter what the headlines are, what the Federal Reserve is doing, or what's going on in Europe. We buy it.' Whether it's buying a company's stock or the entire company, the Berkshire chairman and CEO only pulls the trigger when he grasps the intrinsic value of an asset, understands competition in that industry, and how it may evolve. 'If we're right about the business, the macro factors won't matter. If we're wrong about the business, macro factors won't bail us out,' he added. 'We look to value and don't look to headlines at all. Everybody thinks we sit around and talk about macro factors. We don't have any discussions about macro factors.'

Investors face more volatility as passive index funds and quantitative momentum investments have become popular. These vehicles, which track benchmarks or use trend-following models, have placed buy and sell decisions in the hands of automated machines. Some argue that this has made the market increasingly sensitive to headlines and prone to sharp price swings. Buffett, who studied under Benjamin Graham at Columbia University, the fabled father of value investing, has consistently ignored negative headlines even during some of the worst periods in American history, from the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in 2001 to the great financial crisis of 2008.

He's known for taking advantage of any turmoil to buy assets that are suddenly on sale. The legendary investor famously penned a New York Times op-ed in October 2008 when markets were crashing due to the deepening mortgage crisis and Lehman Brothers' failure. His message: be greedy when others are fearful because 'America is not going to go away; stocks are cheap.' 'There's always going to be good and bad news. What gets emphasized the most depends on the moods of people or newspaper editors,' he said in 2012.