Buffett was buying

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC on Thursday he bought stocks in Wednesday's big selloff.

He won't name names or whether he was adding to positions of his current holdings. But he did describe them in a "Squawk Box" interview as "names you'd recognized."

Buffett said he likes to buy stocks when they go down, not when they go up. He added that trying to time the market by buying and selling individual names is a "fool's game."

Any investor who's owned a cross section of American business has done really well over the past 10 or 20 years, he said. Over time, values do appreciate—not for every stock, he said, adding the Dow Industrial Average (.DJI) was under 100 during his lifetime.

With all the talk on Wall Street about when and by how much the Federal Reserve might start increasing interest rates, Buffett said the central bank's moves have no bearing on his investment strategies. "I really don't care about whether the Fed is going to raise interest rates."

He said he buys businesses that he thinks will be good for the next 50 years—such as the deal he announced on CNBC Thursday that he's buying the nation's largest privately held car dealership group, Van Tuyl Group.