In the last week the S&P 500 has surpassed the high of 4,800 that was set in December 2021. It's taken a little over two years, during which time we experienced a drop of about 25% to about 3,500. As of the time of writing it is sitting at 4,845.
I'm seeing a lot of comments that it doesn't feel like the market should be breaking new highs with so many uncertainties out there in the world. I would suspect this has always been the way though. Has there ever been a time in recorded human history where there wasn't lots of uncertainly going on? Wars, pandemics, oil shocks, rate hikes, disruptive technologies. The future is uncertain, thus uncertainties will always be with us. We just need to be comfortable investing in an unpredictable world.
As an investor my only course of action is to buy good companies when they sell at fair prices, and sit on my hands when they don't. The longer I have been doing this, the more I realise that nobody can ever predict the direction of the markets. They may go up, they may go down, they may go sideways. The skill is in finding the good sustainable businesses, monitoring their performance to ensure they remain good, and to buy them only when the price is right. There could be a 5 year lag between the time I find the business and the time the price is right, but it usually happens in the end. Patience is a virtue in a world of activity.
I'm seeing a lot of comments that it doesn't feel like the market should be breaking new highs with so many uncertainties out there in the world. I would suspect this has always been the way though. Has there ever been a time in recorded human history where there wasn't lots of uncertainly going on? Wars, pandemics, oil shocks, rate hikes, disruptive technologies. The future is uncertain, thus uncertainties will always be with us. We just need to be comfortable investing in an unpredictable world.
As an investor my only course of action is to buy good companies when they sell at fair prices, and sit on my hands when they don't. The longer I have been doing this, the more I realise that nobody can ever predict the direction of the markets. They may go up, they may go down, they may go sideways. The skill is in finding the good sustainable businesses, monitoring their performance to ensure they remain good, and to buy them only when the price is right. There could be a 5 year lag between the time I find the business and the time the price is right, but it usually happens in the end. Patience is a virtue in a world of activity.