If You Knew the Stock Market Would Drop 50% Tomorrow, Would You Stay In?

Welcome to EWA’s FinLit podcast. EWA is a fee -only RIA based at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We hope all listeners of this podcast will benefit as we deep dive into complex financial topics that we will make simplified for you and we hope that this really serves as a catalyst so that you can make the best financial planning decisions for your family and also save time.

Welcome to EWA today. We are going to address the recent market volatility. We’ve seen a lot of it in right when COVID hit. We saw a 34% decline in the S &P 500 with a quick recovery. Then in 2022, we saw a over 20% drop in U .S.

equity markets and then also 2023 started off hot with the AI boom in some of these tech sectors, tech stocks. Unfortunately, in the last month, there’s been a 10% drop, almost 10% drop in the S &P 500 depending on the day you look at from the high water mark.

Today, our goal is to address why is market volatility a good thing? What are some tips and tactics on how to get through market volatility and maintain peace of mind, maintain sanity, etc. Stephanie, excited to have you join me here.

Thanks, Matt. This is a really timely topic, so we wanted to get in front of this and always be extremely transparent about our philosophies as a firm and hopefully reinforce those to our clients and prospects that are listening.

I actually have a question for you to kick us off if that’s okay. Let’s hear it. Which is, obviously, we’ve seen volatility with scenes ups and downs. If you had the crystal ball, Matt, and you knew that within the next month, the market was going to drop by 50%, would you stay in the market or would you get out of the market?

What would you do? 50%. 50% in half. You had $200 ,000 today. Next month, it’s worth $100 ,000. What would you do? And if I got out today… I know I keep my 200 ,000 right now is 200. So if I got out today, I know I’d keep the 200.

Yep. Okay. What would you do? And why? Well, my question, do I know when it’s gonna come out or all the information I know is it just gonna drop 50 %? Just gonna drop 50%. It’s gonna come back eventually.

Okay. Well, I would stay in. I would accept the 200 ,000 turning into 100 ,000. I would, there’s absolutely, even if I knew with crystal ball it’s happening tomorrow, I would stay in. No questions asked.

Well, I think people who are listening just probably think you’re crazy and they probably wanna know why you’re saying that. I agree with you. So I’ll put that out there as well. I would 100% stay in the market.

But what’s the philosophy? What’s the thought process behind that? Okay. Yeah, so first of all, there’s, I personally and any client that EWI represents, we don’t let people or let ourselves put money in the stock market that is ever short -term money.

Right. So the first, premise of why I would see that drop is that relatively in the stock market, that’s gonna be a short -term swing. Any money I put in the market is addressing long -term goals. So for our philosophy, it’d be a minimum of seven years, hopefully a lifetime of building financial wealth, financial independence, and making sure your money’s supporting your life by design.

So that drop would be essentially meaningless to me because the money that is in the market for me right now is not for next month. It’s for my daughter’s education in 14 years. It’s for my financial independence.

You know, I’ll probably work until I drop dead, but it’s for financial independence, 30, 40, 50 years and beyond from now. So that would be very relevant. If we just look at statistically, because I do, I’m competitive and obviously I wanna get the best returns and everything like that.

So the reason I would accept that 50% loss is there’s been three of those in the last 40 years. I know you’re gonna get into that. Yeah, we’ll talk about that. However, the statistics would be working so far against me if I got out.

So if I got out at 200 and I have my 200, I’m looking at all my friends laughing at them saying your accounts dropped 50%. The statistics are still really working against me because then the question is, when do I get back in?

Right. And if we just look at statistics, so if the history of the US stock market, at least the average bear market is a drop of 36%, but it only lasts for 10 months. The average bull market comes with 112% return on average and lasts for 2 .7 years.

And if you just look at the S &P 500, this changes every year, but I can say confidently that the S &P 500 goes up 75% of the time. Right. So if I were to get out, that would be like playing a hand of blackjack where I’m like, maybe I win temporarily.

but if that’s truly long -term money, now the biggest risk is when do I get back in? By the time I convince myself to be back in, the market’s probably gonna be back up to where it was and even higher, because these bear markets don’t last long, but the bull markets happen quickly and often, most of the time.

I mean, you actually touched on this a second ago too, which was that very, very sharp, but quick drop during the spring of 2020, down so fast, but before you even make the decision to get back in, people sold out, it was already back up, and then some.

It was very, very quick. So you never know, so statistically speaking, you’re not gonna win on both sides. So you’re not gonna get out at the right point nor back in at the right point, if I’m hearing you correctly.

No question. Which I agree with. No question. Okay, so let’s address, let’s look at history as a teacher, and then let’s address what are some of the biggest concerns that investors have right now. Record high interest rates, relatively speaking, in the last 20 years.

We have the AI that’s kind of overtaken in a lot of companies, if tech companies have seen a surge while everything else is dropping. And then we’ve got, we’re, you know, the world, right now specifically, there’s a war going on.

A lot of people are worried that this could turn into something much bigger on a higher level. And then we also have an election coming up. So lots of concerns and, you know, my favorite thing to hear is like from investors is this time is different.

And I always agree, because every time is different. And there’s always gonna be reasons why the market goes down, but why that’s always a good thing is what happens after the market goes down is explosive growth.

So Stephanie, why don’t you give us a, give us a detailed recap of like the three market downturns that have happened in the last 40 years. Absolutely, so I mean, I think we should start off by saying that, you know, if you’re 50 years old today, in 2023, you were born in 1973 or earlier, you have actually already lived through three, the three biggest market downturns that we already had.

And then on the other side of that, if you were born before the year 2000, you’ve lived through two of the three, in addition to the quick drop of COVID. So I mean, most clients that we’re working with, you know, from age like 25 to 50, you’ve been through a lot of this already.

So this is history sort of repeating itself, but each and every time it is something different. There’s a different catalyst, you know, to the market dropping. So on that note, the big ones were 1973 to 74, 2000 to 2002, and then 2007 to 2009.

So people will argue, as you said, that, you know, all these are different because, you know, one, we have, we have politics, a lot of politics going on with Watergate and so forth. Then we have the dot -com, bubble burst, you know, everything kind of imploded in the early 2000s.

And then, you know, most recently was a true financial crisis with the mortgage industry. And I think that’s probably the, the fr- freshest of mine with most people from 2007 to 2009. So during those time periods, we saw a drastic decline in the market.

And typically what happens is people see that, then they start selling out and everything goes on sale, basically, the pricing of everything is very, very low. And people do wanna know, okay, well, how long is this gonna last?

That’s great. What’s the average timeframe? When should I get back in? And we’ll talk about the length of time that these things last, but we always come out of it and we come out of it stronger for a bunch of reasons.

So I think we should talk a little bit about what really drives that, drives the rebound, if you would, and the first thing is innovation. You talked about AI and technology already, but innovation doesn’t stop just because there is a political situation or one small sector of the economy is experiencing difficulties.

So let’s talk about that a little bit. About innovation and changing technologies and processes is still gonna continue to happen. Absolutely. So, you know, nine of the 10 biggest companies back when you said 1973, nine of the 10 biggest companies that are represented in the SB500 did not exist 50 years ago.

So that just speaks to innovation. There’s new companies, there’s new innovation happening constantly. And so, you know, if you were, if I were to tell you, you’re going to start investing now for the next 50 years, but you’re going to see three drops of, you know, 48, 49 and 57%.

And those are the drops in accordance with what you just talked about. So basically, your money gets cut in half three times. That’s pretty scary. Absolutely. But the ending result is if you look at the price of the, you know, S &P 500 and just the dividends paid compared to inflation.

So dividends have grown 21 times over, over that period when inflation, the CPI index has grown seven times over. So just the dividends, forget about the appreciation of the SB500, just the dividends has grown three times what inflation has.

That’s crazy. That’s from 1972 to 2002. So we’re talking a big 50 year time span. Yeah, absolutely. Well, the other thing I was going to mention too is that I think why people, information is so readily available today, that it’s so hard to look at your statements, see it down, because you, you know, essentially we think everything that’s happening is our life today.

And the reality is, I like to use the analogy of like a house. So if you have a half million dollar house, and you put it on the market, now a house you don’t get a statement every month to show what it’s worth.

You can look online and try to get an estimate. But here’s my analogy of how people overreact to these statements is if you had a house worth half million dollars, you tried to sell it today and there wasn’t a buyer today.

Logically, you could say, well, there wasn’t a stock is, you know, essentially when you’re looking at a statement, you could sell it for that price today. So if it’s down 20%, that’s a loss. If you accept that loss, now a house, if you can’t sell it today, if we use that same logic, we would be saying your house is worth $0.

Because in a stock, you could sell it to anyone at a 20% loss on a moment’s notice. In that example, your house, you can’t sell it to anyone, which makes it worthless if we’re gonna use that example as a stock, but the reality is, is it worthless?

No, it’s gonna take time usually to sell. And there’s obviously cycles in the real estate, but there’s something with a peace of mind with a physical asset versus the statements or that you can even check your accounts every line.

So this is so psychological and it’s so important to know that you’re not selling it everything in our culture, everything in the news outlet works against us because bad news sells, good news does not.

You know, there’s a million, we’re living in a world that, you know, despite being in a war has the least crime in history. We have more people out of poverty, you know, on a yearly basis in history.

Unemployment’s exceptionally, maintains, you know, to be exceptionally low. Exceptionally low. There’s so many good things that are happening yet. I don’t hear anyone talking about any of these things ever, essentially, but there are so much focuses on the war, interest rates, inflate, the rise in cost of college, and all these negative things.

And these news outlets, which control, you know, our attention span, I was looking at like, there’s, yeah, and Netflix now is like almost 10%, and I think of like attention, TikTok is scary, large, there’s these social media outlets, and there’s these few companies that have all of our attention.

If you look at the content that a lot of these companies push out, it’s very negative. And so I think that’s important that any investment should not only be long -term, but I also believe if you wanna be successful, you have to attach it to a financial plan.

Because if not, it becomes meaningless, and it becomes a short -term. How do I make money today? And that’s where really, really poor decisions can make. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would just echo that by saying, you know, there isn’t, you know, a running ticker, like you were talking about with your home.

There’s not a running ticker of the value of other things in your life. There just so happens to be, you know, a daily metric, you know, on the market that’s highly visible, that’s talked about, it’s on the front.

Actually, if you’re on your phone, you even get those, you know, on the news, it’ll tell you what’s happening with the market. And people are on their phones, like you said, constantly. So there’s no running ticker of your home value every single day.

So you’re not looking at the, you know, the small increases and decreases in value. So you’re right, it is psychological. And a lot of the news, that’s out there and we talk about this significantly, we talk about social media, is it’s designed to have someone click on that article.

So sometimes you’ll click on an article and the title is even completely misleading. The content doesn’t really have much to do with it, but then there’s advertisers on the side. So that’s how the media and, you know, news outlets, that’s how they’re making their living too.

So of course they’re going to put out whatever sells, whatever’s clicked, you know, gets the most clicks. And right now that tends to be, you know, airing on the side of negative. So it’s unfortunate.

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I want to point out too with just staying in the market is that there is a huge inequality of wealth, inequality of income in America. And that’s continuing to trend up in favor of the rich.

And this attention economy that we live in is literally the steroids that are feeding that. Let me give you an example. So it used to be that if you invested in an IPO, transfer initial public offering, you know, You get in before a public before a stock like Facebook before when it went public you get in the IPO And then if the share price goes up you make a ton of money Well, if you look at the IPOs that have happened in the last couple years, it’s alarmingly It’s like over two -thirds of the IPOs they’ve it’s almost like a pump -and -dump scheme So who invested in these companies before they went public?

Let’s like Instacart as an example It’s usually people that our credit investors are millionaires already they get into these companies while they’re public then the The the value of the company appreciates Then everyone that’s invested and put all this risk on the table They want to make their money and lock it out so it goes public and then the rest of the world You know essentially the middle or lower class like oh IPO if this is like this fancy thing I can part I’m gonna buy these shares as soon as they come on the market and then Everyone gets out that it made their money made the easy money and then everyone else loses And this has happened on like more than two -thirds of the recent IPOs so the other thing I found in common right now not just with You know being fearful of market volatility is there’s always the search for the next thing There’s always the search for the new fat and most of these fads are very short -term and what they end up being is a transfer of wealth Unfortunately from the poor to make the rich even richer and that’s very prevalent in the IPO market That’s prevalent and you know these different coins that are out there right now and I can give you know private equity investing Which owns a lot of stuff alarmingly now So Financial literacy education is so important, but what what doesn’t change is that you know the S &P 500 for example really good companies Are gonna continue to innovate they’re gonna continue investing good products and services And if you stick with those basics and attach them to a long -term financial plan This is you know literally nearly impossible to mess up But if we get distracted by let’s try to time the market, let’s try to get into the new fad.

Whatever’s shiny and new. Then your network’s going to continuously get cut in half, and you’re going to realize losses. In a good financial plan, you should never realize a loss. Because a loss is only a loss if you realize it.

Absolutely. Oh, sorry. Go right ahead. I was going to say just that, yeah, that’s something that I think we can probably both attest to as, you know, the loss is only on paper until you actually take action and you sell shares of anything.

So the concept of loss truly is conceptual until you make that reality and that’s a decision. And that’s actually what we’re here to talk about today, is being able to differentiate those good and bad decisions and making sure that all the decisions that you’re making along the way support, again, that financial goal that then, again, supports your life by design.

So that’s what we’re here for. So let’s talk a little bit about. you know, earnings index, you know, what’s the timeframe for recovery from, you know, these dips in the market? Because I think that’s what people really want to know.

Yeah. So if we look back to the end of 1972, the S &P 500 was 118. And then if we fast forward at the end of 2022, we’re in 2023, but let’s look at the end of the calendar to keep this simple. It was 3840.

So in that 2022, that was after one of the worst years. I mean, it was well above 4 ,000 in the year before. From 118 to 3840 over that period of 50 years, that’s still a 32X return. And then if we look at the earnings on average of the company, in 1972, it was $6 .17.

And in the end of 2022, it was $219. So that’s a 35X increase in earnings and price earnings ratios. So if we just look at that, and that obviously 50 years is a very long period, it’s pretty simple to say, okay, those 350% drops are scary, but it’s worth it just to stay in because I’m going to 32X my money.

My dividends are going to 3X inflation. Pretty simple. Why is it not that simple? Why do people get so caught up in the, I lost money. I lost money. Well, the psychology is really working against us.

We’ve talked about the news outlets, but they’ve done studies that losing a dollar is much more painful than gaining a dollar. And just to set expectations, like the longest declines, they call the decade of the 2000, like the last decade, because there was the tech bust in 2000 through 2002.

And then there was also the financial crisis of 2008. So the longest period from decline to recovery was five years and eight months. And that was August of 2000, April 2006. So that’s a six year period where if you had just invested the S &P 500, you wouldn’t want to have touched your money.

That’s again going back to the how do you get through market volatility. You don’t invest short -term money because you don’t want to be in the position where you’re forcing yourself to sell at a loss.

You need to have figured out what your relationship is between returns and risk. The way we do that is through asset allocation diversification. We’re not just investing in the S &P 500. We’re not just investing in one sector.

We’re removing a lot of risk while still maintaining returns that are going to 2 or 3x inflation. The other thing too is you need to have a safe bucket. If we look at our philosophy of EWA, we recommend if you’re retired.

have seven years of withdrawals and something safe. And that’s the data why. So that’s the longest recovery period is five years and eight months. And we don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future.

So we round that way up, not five years and eight months up to seven years. And so essentially what that means is in your financial plan, regardless of what’s happening with interest rates, regardless of what’s happening with the war, regardless of what’s happening out in the world, you personally will never have to take a loss because you have the plan, a good plan can get you through a bad time.

And we don’t have to worry about market timing because your life can continue to go on exactly as you see fit, regardless of what this talk market’s doing. Right, and I mean, I think there’s two things that came out of what you just said for me, which is number one, we’re talking specifically, all this data is coming from the S &P, which is just one index.

So you just said the word asset allocation and diversification. So it’s highly unlikely in a properly diversified portfolio that is spread out across multiple asset classes that every asset class is going to behave in the same way.

So I mean, this is to me, is like that if the case scenario is you had 100% of your money in the S &P 500, over this period, you would experience those large dips. That’s the whole purpose behind our asset allocation philosophy is to bring that risk level down and have the best risk adjusted return or lose less in these market conditions.

So that’s number one, and then number two, is not having the adequate, safe money outside. And again, we should never be investing money that we need within the six year time period, and this is the data.

So if any of our clients are listening to this and they’re wondering, well, where did that data come from? This is where it’s coming from. So I think it’s exceptionally poignant to talk about because the biggest question I can see coming out of this as well, what if I’m already retired and I’m not adding to my portfolio and I need to be able to still continue to live while the market’s down?

We just answered that question. And we’ll continue to answer that. And I think the analogy is like, if you have a severe health problem and you’re going to a doctor to try to fix that problem and that something completely unrelated goes wrong, with your health and then you blame that on that doctor.

I mean, the reality is like a good financial plan should be so proactive, you know, diet, exercise, all those things to prevent these problems before they occur. And a good financial plan can address, because I think a lot, too many investors think of financial plan as, I want my advisor to just make me a ton of money in this period of time.

Well, that’s gambling, because no one has a magic crystal ball in a short period of time of what to, if they do, they can get it right, they can’t get it consistently right, and maybe they get you one return.

But the magic of creating true wealth is consistent compounded annual growth rate. It’s not simple interest, the eighth one of the world is compounded growth rate. And so even in one or two years, you know, that can be erased very quickly, even 10 year returns of 10% as you’re growing.

And if you use this big bucket of money and you get one down year of 50%, I mean, that can all be erased very quickly. So this all goes back to a good financial plan because a lot of people that have overextended themselves their cars or houses, everything they do, what happens is the money they have set aside for the long term becomes short term money because they’ve made other poor decisions.

So this all relates. It’s this like full holistic plan that you need to make sure your investment portfolio is working for you. You need to make really good financial planning choices in the rest of your life.

If you don’t, you’re gonna end up pulling money at a down and then you’re gonna end up blaming the market or the war or a president that you don’t like or whatever it is for poor financial choices that were made in the financial plan.

So the biggest piece of advice for volatility, I think we have, so a couple of things, some of that just have a really good financial plan, a good financial plan, get you through any kind of bad time if it’s truly stress test.

Ignore the media as much as possible again, just realizing how people make money is super important in their incentives and media makes money through, typically viewership and advertising and they’re not gonna get your views pointing out how many free meals were given to someone in need.

They’re gonna get the views to say how many people were just murdered somewhere. Right, it’s whatever sensational today. The stock price is going down. That’s how you, and studies have shown the people that watched the news long enough have more trauma than the people that were actually at the event themselves.

And that said it was done after the Boston bombing of the marathon. Unbelievable. I mean, I believe it, because talking to some people that, they watch the news every day. I mean, it’s almost like they were there.

Well, and you’re also digesting a lot of that because there’s multiple negative headlines. So if you go down to rabbit hole, if you would, on something you probably digested five or six negative stories within that time period.

So I mean, you’re really, it’s compounding, you’re compounding that psychological effect. It’s reinforcing what you’ve already been telling yourself, which is that the market’s down. So we need to really steer clear of that.

Absolutely. Clear head. So the second one is it’s not, just remember a loss is not a loss. unless you realize the loss, and again, it’s not a gain until you realize the gain. So anything you put in the market should be long term.

It should be asset allocated to those, should always be optionality of something to pool and a gain, so a good financial plan, regardless of what the stock market’s doing, you should never in your lifetime take a loss.

So that’s rule number two, how to get through market volatility. Rule number three is you gotta have patience and discipline. You know, these things happen over the long periods of time. You know, rolling returns over 20 years, that’s be 500, nearly always positive.

If you look at one year, yeah, you’re gonna be guessing, maybe you would have been better in cash that year, but you can’t get that right every year. And people that try to do that, they’ve actually done studies, funds that do 8% over 20 years, individual investors, in those funds get half the return.

Studies have clearly shown that we’re happy to share that’s with anyone interested. And then the fourth thing, you know, to get through market volatility is focus on your financial plan and focus on the controllables.

There’s so many things out of our control, but if you focus on the controllables, making good decision making, that will enable you to let your investment plan go to work over the long term and not have to worry about the short term.

100%. Yeah, I mean, that’s really the value of your advisor too. It’s to really coach you through these. More of the psychological aspect of investing, anybody can put you into a fund or a stock, but coaching through these situations and ensuring that we’re making the best decisions and the right mindset is really like the value of what we do.

No question. Well, some of our favorite quotes, you know, stock market is a slow transfer of wealth from inpatient investors to patient investors, as we say, saw from 1972 to 2022, you know, 32 X returns on your money, couple thousand would have turned into millions over that period.

And then Charlie Munger said, if you’re not willing to lose 50% in the stock, you shouldn’t be invested anyway. So that’s the mindset. You shouldn’t be invested in the stock market unless you’re willing to see a 50% decline, not lose.

We don’t lose money in a financial plan. And a good financial planner should not put you in the market if you can’t withstand that 50% drop and then inevitably the explosive growth that’s gonna happen in front of that.

Because they would only, a good financial plan would only put money in the market that has a long enough term, a goal attached to it, that those inevitable volatile cycles are irrelevant in the context of your plan.

All right, absolutely. Let’s talk about something positive. People are gonna click on it because it’s positive, but I like to talk about this, and this is the way I choose to view situations as such, is that price and value have an inverse relationship.

So if something’s priced high, you know, the value is gonna be lower, but if the price is lower, the value goes up. So this is exactly what I’m talking about. what happens when the market goes down as well.

So a lot of clients, we have some very, very smart clients who, you know, they have a great reserve. They also have cash that they don’t need for that backup. And it’s kind of sitting on the sidelines ready to deploy.

This is the perfect time to purchase something at a lower price that has a potentially very high value. So it’s like one of those situations where if something goes on sale, what happens? People flock to purchase said items.

So this is what’s going to happen in the market, how we should be viewing this is this is a great opportunity to purchase quality, you know, investments companies with who are continuing to innovate, you know, produce new products and services and innovate processes to buy those at a very steep discount.

Because those will then you will eventually ride that, you know, recovery all the way up and then some. So this is a great opportunity if you have cash on the sidelines, great chance to deploy that by some things, you know, Adam, they’re very high value for a low price.

No question. I like that one a lot. No question. Another positive thing too, and we’ll, for those that are watching this on the video, on Spotify or YouTube, the sheet I just put on the screen shows a, every downturn of 25% or greater in stock market history.

This shows from the Great Depression, and just circling the red there, there’s an 83% drop from April 30th of 1930, till June 1st of 1932. The duration of the downturn was 25 months. And then if we look at the next one, which was the World War II, this was a 28% decline over 20 months.

Then the Cold War, pretty quick, 28% drop in six months. And then the Vietnam, 19 months, 34% drop. And then everything Stephanie just talked about in 1973. Then in 1980 and 1982, Black Monday .com, Global Financial Crisis.

And then we had the COVID -19, which was a 34% drop. The longest duration of to get to the bottom, not to for the recovery, was 39 months. But after that drop, after that bottom was hit, if we look at the one, five, and 10 year returns following every drop in US history, greater than 25%, there was absolutely explosive growth that’s occurred every single time.

So what we can’t tell you today is what’s the bottom? We don’t know. When is it going to happen? When is it going to happen? We can tell you on average these things last three years. Sometimes recovery to get back to even would be six years.

But following those periods of times, the market always reaches new highs. And there’s typically double digit growth rates available for all investors. And so that’s to answer your first question. Would you get out?

I would say no, is I would be much, much more afraid of missing that huge, not just just the rebound, but then the growth of the economy that happens after, then worrying about a temporary feel good.

My statement looks good for a couple months, because then I’m most likely going to miss on huge positive outcomes in the future. Right. I love it. I mean, yeah, even the best companies experience downturn, so those are temporary.

And the trend of the market always long term is up. So the same thing, I’d be afraid of missing out on that explosive growth factor afterwards, that we’ve seen happen each and every single time that this happened.

So I think using history as our teacher, that’s how I would answer that question as well. And I would very convictively say that our clients would as well. Absolutely. Well, Stephanie, thanks for joining.

Of course. And look forward to catching you next week. Thanks for tuning in to our podcast. Hopefully you found this helpful. Really hope this is as beneficial as possible. official and impactful to as many people across the nation as possible.

So hit the follow button. Make sure to rate the podcast and please share with any friends or family members that would also find this beneficial. Thank you very much.