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Holding is the hardest part because it combines all the feelings and potential regrets that can arise from both buying and selling. Howard Marks once wrote, “It’s not the things you buy and sell that make you money; it’s the things you hold.”

Buying is the easy part of buy-and-hold. Anyone can buy-and-hope. It’s the hold part that’s hard.

Here’s what we know when it comes to investing in stocks:

We know that stocks are the best asset class for generating long-term returns that exceed inflation.
We know that stocks occasionally exhibit bone-crushing volatility.
We know that, on average, stocks fall by 5% roughly two to three times per year.
We know that, on average, stocks fall by 10% roughly once every year or two.
We know that, on average, stocks fall by 20% or more roughly once every 4 to 5 years.

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2025/04/the-thing...

Using long-term averages during a period of general rising US prosperity post WW2 skews our thinking.

This writer, like most financial writers these days, is anchoring to the past and not recognizing that the US has most likely entered into a new period of general decline. I like Ben; I read his articles and listen to his podcasts with Batnick pretty often, and they are almost always long term positive. And really, they are in the investing business so they pretty much have to be positive. If they start telling their clients that this is the end of investment as we once knew it, and the US will now be a smaller player on the world economic stage, their clients would run away.

I submit that the US will no longer enjoy the tailwinds we have enjoyed in the past, and this time it is probably different. I don’t see enough people in the US realizing this is happening unfortunately, so I’m sadly doubtful we can stop the slide. I’m with a group of mostly older, retired folks locally trying some things to get people to realize it’s happening, but it’s really hard to get through to the general population. And I get it— people are busy with their lives, and don’t have the time to sit around and ponder future general decline. But until we have mass marches here by 3.5% of the population, I fear we are not going to be able to turn this ship around.

Here’s a link from the BBC on the 3.5% protest figure:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-onl...

Most US born citizens have had it so good for so long, that we don’t seem to have the ability to imagine not being on the top of the world stage anymore. We are truly mostly fat and happy over here (relatively), so it’s difficult to get us to mass protest anything.

Maybe when the goods we rely on are either too expensive, or not even on the shelves, people will wake up? Hope so!

Holding is the hardest part because it combines all the feelings and potential regrets that can arise from both buying and selling. Howard Marks once wrote, “It’s not the things you buy and sell that make you money; it’s the things you hold.”

In a way, you can trick yourself when the emotional pressure gets too high and you *must* bail, but still hold.

If you are looking at a large loss in, say, QQQ, then sell the QQQ (taking the tax loss) and buy SPY or VONG. Largely the same stocks, but now the red mostly disappears. Instant relief.

Then when the market bumps up, instead of seeing the red go from -20% to -19%, you see 1% in the black.

Although some of us managed to go through two -50% loss periods without jumping out of the window.

We know that, on average, stocks fall by 5% roughly two to three times per year.
We know that, on average, stocks fall by 10% roughly once every year or two.
We know that, on average, stocks fall by 20% or more roughly once every 4 to 5 years.

And that stocks fall by 50% or more roughly once every 35 to 40 years (4 times in the last 150 years).

And that stocks fall by 50% or more roughly once every 35 to 40 years (4 times in the last 150 years).

Presumably that figure would be for the index. It's vastly more common for individual stocks.

On any given random day since 1986 (which includes several serious bull markets), on average 7.6% of mid-to-large caps are trading at less than half their 52 week highs. The percentage would be a fair bit higher considering all time highs, or small cap stocks.

In case anybody is interested, on average they are terrible investments. Average return negative, 13.5%/year worse than the S&P 500.

Jim

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