And if I’m wrong and everyone is actually doing it, how is it sustainable in the long run? I mean, we can’t all be millionaires.
And if I’m wrong and everyone is actually doing it, how is it sustainable in the long run? I mean, we can’t all be millionaires.
It’s not entirely without risk. 2008 saw the S&P lose over 30% for the year, and 2002 was over 20%. But it is up more often than down year-to-year, and it is usually up by at least 10%.
I found some good charts here, even though it is a EU site:
https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/market-index/sp-500?currency=usd
If you are investing for the long haul , you will take the occasional 30% haircut if you can get 10-20% the rest of the time. But it would suck if you got that 30% haircut just before you needed to sell…
For the average middle class individual or family, they’ll never sell all of their investments, but only small amounts each month to cover monthly expenses when they retire, so even in the situation of a 30% decrease, they’re only selling off a fraction of a percent of their portfolio each month
Yep. They key part is to invest for 20, 30, 40 years, where those consistent 10-20% gains compound and vastly outweigh the occasional 30% losses. Even if you had invested at the worst time in 2007, you are currently up 285%.