Look up Elliott Wave Theory - It's not perfect and is really about being probabilistic, but absolutely that the market moves on waves of mass optimism and pessimism at all degrees (repeating fractal patterns, like snowflakes), i.e., patterns repeat themselves on a minute, hour, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries basis. Sure within the waves, you can dive into fundamentals, but you can justify valuations, earnings, all you want, but markets move on emotion, in our pre-frontal cortex area, and on a mass level. The high-volume stock market is the perfect barometer and medium for this swinging mass emotion to be tracked.
That said, sure buy and hold, the market always goes up, yada yada yada, but there are periods where the corrective waves (of mass pessimism) take longer to play out and are more destructive in nature, and the one we're about to begin (likely Q1 next year) is just such a time period. See 100-year chart
here (screen shot here also). You can see of course the somewhat short-term but highly destructive 1929-32 crash. Then there is a long period of about 12-13 years of stagnation in the 70s, that was a correction wave of a few degrees lower; and then the 2000 to 2009 wave correction, one degree higher from the 1970s; but now we are likely at a degree of wave that is likely to be as destructive as the 129-32 crash but will be longer in a more sideways zig zag manner like the 70s and 2000s corrections and likely to last 12-13 years where the ultimate low will likely come in the late 2030s, and as you can, is likely to print a low of 1500-1600 then. As you can see by the chart, this will be a correction of the 1932 bottom to 2026 top bullish wave and timeframe, a 94-year run
But of course, it's probabilistic and you monitor the waves as they play out in real time, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. There will be peaks and valleys for sure, but they will be on much longer time horizons, so if you're older, timing is a lot more important as there could be 2-3 years of destructive bear markets that then take 2-3 years to come back to not even the same level - maybe 62% back if we're lucky, maybe a marginal new, if we're really lucky. If you're young and just keep dollar-cost averaging, it'll all work out. But again, it's what the long bear periods mean for people's psychology, and for our economy and lives. There will be some tough periods. Kind of makes sense too if you want to get a bit fundamental and think about the destruction we'll endure if Trump and the New Right worm their way into complete and relentless authoritarian power that lasts the next 8-10 years, or even longer, if he and the New Right get their way. But again, even during Nazi Germany times, markets went up a lot during their reign and WWII so not all bear market and straight down.
Interesting times ahead...
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