Bear Markets Suck.
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown
In Michael’s new blog post, Higher Highs and Lower Lows, he talks about some amazing stats that most people probably aren’t aware of. From 1990 through today, the stock market rose on 53.4% of all days and fell 46.6% of all days.
In fact, stocks have only had 500 more positive days than negative days during that entire period. Even so, the S&P 500 has managed to return over 660% during the time period, and that’s before you include dividends. A single day in the market is the ultimate short-term period during which to measure stock market performance and the long-term is all that counts – however, people don’t live their lives in the long-term, they live in a long chain of short-terms.
This becomes very important to keep in mind, along with the psychological effects of increased volatility, when stocks are trending lower.
