There are few things scarier than a bear market, but steep and sustained drawdowns in stocks are an absolute fact of investing life. Markets go through cycles; always have, always will.Â
It’s also true that despite being inevitable and unpleasant, bear markets are not entirely all bad. An irony of bear markets is that they’re one of the exceedingly rare times when long-term retail investors can actually have an advantage over the pros.
Traders and tacticians are under constant pressure to do something, even as a receding tide lowers all boats. Contrast that with retail investors, who are luxuriously free from clients yelling at them all day. Normies can just sit back and dollar-cost average into stocks at increasingly cheaper prices.
Most importantly, a patient long-term investor who is diversified in accordance with his or her age, stage in life and risk tolerance can not only wait out a bear market, but profit from it. Remember: The market can be miserable at times, but its long-term trend is always to the up and right.
A familiarity with the basics of bear markets should help investors better cope with the next one. To that end, we’ve compiled the following eight facts you must know about bear markets.
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