I feel like I’m writing this statement for the thousandth time since I started Personal Finance Club, but here it goes again. “Just a few months ago the headlines were filled with doom and gloom, predictions of crashes and recessions, yet today the S&P 500 just hit an all time record high.”

This is why I constantly preach to “buy and hold”. Even though there are things to rightly be concerned about in the news, that doesn’t mean we can act on that information in regards to our investments. It FEELS as though the smart thing to do is read the news about the upcoming economic troubles, then make some changes, like sell your stocks, move to bonds, etc to deftly avoid them. But that doesn’t work. By the time the news is hitting your eyes, everything that news implies about the future has already been priced in to the stock market. So if you sell, when you see bad news, you’re too late. Then when the eventual recovery happens (as it always does), but the time you realize that, it will be too late. The stock market will already be at a record high, as it is today.

Does this mean the stock market isn’t going to crash in the future? No. In fact, I’m sure it IS going to crash in the future. I just don’t know when, or by how much. The bottom of the next crash could be HIGHER than today’s price. i.e. if you wait for a crash, you might miss out on the market shooting up 50% just to avoid a 20% crash. You’ll be better off just buying and holding through all of it.

So today’s lesson is this: Don’t try to time the market. Instead focus on aquiring more shares. Market at an all time high? Buy more shares. Market falling? Buy more shares. Market being a silly goose? Buy more shares. Over time, you’ll have a lot of shares and that’s what you want.

As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often.

-Jeremy