Tag: bear market

The Stock Market’s Best Days Arrive When Everything Looks Terrible

On April 9, 2025, the S&P 500 surged 9.5% in a single trading session. It was the index’s biggest daily gain since the 2008 financial crisis, and it happened in the middle of a market panic. Just days earlier, investors had been dumping stocks as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements triggered fears of a […]

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The S&P 500 Falls 14% in an Average Year. Most Years Still End in the Green.

A stock market chart can tell two completely different stories depending on where you stop reading it. Take 2025. By early April, the S&P 500 was being dragged toward bear-market territory by the shock surrounding sweeping new US tariffs. The index fell almost 19% from its previous high. Volatility exploded, recession fears returned, trillions of […]

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The Worst Market Timer Ever Still Retired a Millionaire

Imagine spending your entire investing life making almost perfectly terrible decisions. You buy stocks just before the 1973–74 bear market. You return immediately before Black Monday in 1987. Then you pile in at the peak of the dot-com bubble and, for your grand finale, invest just before the global financial crisis. That is essentially the […]

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What Is the VIX? How to Use Wall Street’s “Fear Index” to Invest Smarter

The stock market has a cruel sense of humor. Buying feels easiest when prices have been climbing for months and everyone is optimistic. The best opportunities, meanwhile, often appear when headlines are ugly, portfolios are bleeding and the instinct to click “sell” becomes almost physical. That is exactly the environment the VIX was built to […]

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