What if you were told that over the next 10 years, these 7 things would happen…
War will escalate globally.
A U.S. president will resign.
Unemployment doubles.
Taxes triple.
Inflation quadruples.
Oil increases in price by 1,000%.
The stock market is flat.
This was the outlook presented by one of the largest asset managers in the world at a recent conference. A few of my teammates were with me for this presentation, and needless to say we didn’t look at each other with much optimism!
Here’s the interesting part.
Thankfully, this wasn’t their forecast.
It already happened.
1972 -1982.
My point here is not to minimize any of the events above, as they are all very serious things that impacted millions of people. Any one of these would make headlines today on their own.
The point is, markets don’t follow headlines the way we think they do. Most investors assume headlines drive markets. History suggests they don’t, at least not in an obvious way.
As the legendary trader Jesse Livermore said, “The stock market is never obvious. It is designed to fool most people, most of the time.” The news always looks unprecedented and headlines are designed to sensationalize. There is always something to be scared of in markets and investing.
The hardest–and often the most important–decision is to do nothing.