A Blinding Flash of the Obvious

CNBC was on in the background, I wasn’t really paying attention, but then I heard it.

“No bear market has ever occurred in the US stock market without a recession”

There it was a blinding insight into the obvious.  Who was that masked man? I may never know. He was gone before I could focus my attention, but he left behind something so true it forced me to rethink all the fears that market corrections cause.

If you want proof then you can follow this link to a chart that is easy to understand. There has been one exception: October of 1987’s infamous Black Monday when the Dow plunged 22% in one day.

Could we have another day like that?  Maybe, but remember the Dow closed that day at 1,738.74. The Dow closed at 16,102.38 on 9/4/2015.

The moral of this story is sometimes we get so caught up in the day to day worries of markets and headlines that the obvious is often overlooked.

It’s obvious that equity markets go down. It’s obvious that markets don’t stay down.

It’s obvious we are fearful and it’s obvious we should be bold.

It’s obvious we should have a long term view of our investments yet it’s obvious we succumb to short term fears.