Each year, the stock market can have unpredictable swings, ups and downs, that cause people to panic and react in a detrimental way to their financial and emotional health. With a great amount of anxiety and stress, they sell when the market goes down and lock in the loss permanently.

You can completely avoid such sufferings by understanding two characteristics of the stock market:

One, the stock market is strong. For over 200 years of the stock market history, the record shows that the earnings hover around an average of 8 to 10% per year. This rate of return is better than that of the bond market investment throughout history.

Two, the stock market is resilient. The market downturn is temporary. Over every rolling 10-year period, the market is always up, 100% of the time. It has gone through pandemics, epidemics, earthquakes, fire, war… many many disasters.

From day to day, month to month, the market is volatile in the short run. But in the long run, it’s stable.

And investing should be about the long term. So don’t lose sleep over the market.