Video Discription |
During a Bear Market, everyone has the same question: when will the market stop going down?! In this video, Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Advisor, Cary Stamp, CFP®, provides useful information about the definition of a bear market, considerations to keep in mind about past corrections, and prudent ways to respond.
TRANSCRIPT:
I'm financial advisor Cary Stamp and founder of Cary Stamp and Company. We're getting a lot of questions right now about both the stock market and the bond market. And these are really common questions.
The most common question is, is it going to keep going down? And the answer is, nobody really knows. We'll talk about where we are today. Earlier this month, in June of 2022, we went into what's called a Bear Market. And simply put, the definition of a Bear Market is when a market declines 20% off of its previous high. That's where we are today.
Now, the question is, where do we go from here? Because every single bear market that we've had has eventually ended and the people that stayed in and didn't panic during the bottom of a bear market are the people that got rewarded as long-term investors. We go through a phase that's called the recovery phase. The recovery phase is dependent upon a number of different factors. The first is, what caused the bear market? Was it a political event? Was it an economic event? Was it rising inflation? Was it a combination of many of those different factors?
The other thing you have to look at is if there is a recession involved, 75% of the time following a bear market, there's been a recession in the not too distant future. Many people say that the stock market is a leading economic indicator and often tells you where the economy's going to be 6 to 9 months out. Well, right now, the stock market is telling us that the economy is most likely going to get worse in the not too distant future.
Should that scare us? It's a great time if you have cash on the sidelines to average money into the markets. I don't know when the market's going to stop going down, but I also know that at this point in the cycle, generally, much of the damage has already been done when you get to the down 20% point. In many cases, the markets can keep going down. In fact, in a recent article in Forbes magazine, the magazine said once the S&P goes down by 20%, stocks generally or typically fall by another 12% from there. And that takes an index an average of 95 days to hit the end of that bear market. Then it starts to recover.
We then hit what's called the capitulation phase, and that's where everybody just throws up their hands and says, Oh my God, it's never going to get better, I better get out now while I still have some money left. A lot of people get caught in that trap. Once we see the capitulation phase, it's the ideal time to be investing in very good quality equities because over an extended period of time, they provide the highest possible returns of almost any asset class.
That's where the opportunity comes in, if you have cash. Large companies, small companies, international companies, if they're providing solid earnings, paying solid dividends and they're solid firms, think about what you can buy or what index you can buy so that you can capitalize on the opportunity. Bear market... unfortunately, it's where we are today. Is it going to get better? If history tells you anything, it always has. So don't worry, don't stress and you might not want to look at your statement for a little while, because it could get worse before it gets better.
I'm Cary Stamp, and this has been a Principled Wealth Moment. |