How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Stock Market Forever

Most commentary about the stock market boils down to one big idea: "Sometimes stocks go up, and sometimes stocks go down." The day-to-day volatility (ups and downs) of the stock market is what makes it risky, but in the long run, the stock market is often the best place to put your investment dollars.

Many people worry about the daily ups and downs of the stock market. They wonder if now is the right time to put money into the stock market, or if they should wait a few months until stock prices get cheaper. They fret about when to buy or sell a certain stock, and how much of it to consider.

As for me, I've (largely) managed to avoid these day-to-day worries about the stock market. I'm a long-term investor, I don't time the market, and I don't buy individual stocks. I'm lucky to earn a good enough living and have enough cash in my emergency fund that I don't have to make big bets on any one company's stock or worry about the results of any one day on Wall Street.

But the biggest lesson I've learned in my life about how to stop worrying about stock prices happened in 2020 -- during the early days of the pandemic.

Feb. 2020 -- the Great COVID Crash

Everyone's tired of talking about the pandemic, but it's worth reminding everyone of what life was like in February 2020. Ominous new words like "coronavirus" and "quarantine" and "ventilator" were in the headlines. Fear and uncertainty was everywhere. International borders were closing, cruise ships were turning up full of sick passengers, and Americans were stocking up on hand sanitizer and toilet paper.

I'll never forget how it felt to live through that stressful, surreal, upside-down time. And yet, many people might have forgotten what happened to the stock market that month. Between Feb. 14 and March 20, 2020, the S&P 500 index went down by 31%. No one knew what was going to happen to the global economy, if we were going to have a new Great Depression, if "life as normal" would ever return.

This was the "COVID crash." We all lived through it. It forged me as an investor -- because I didn't panic. I didn't sell all my stocks at a loss. At the lowest point of March 20, 2020, I wasn't worried about the stock market -- I was worrying about more important things.

Finding perspective in time of crisis

I didn't even want to check the value of my retirement savings in March 2020; I didn't sell stocks, I didn't panic, I didn't even look at my IRA account. Instead, I was just trying to do my work and take care of my children (who were suddenly home from school, which at the time seemed like it might be a permanent change).

I still remember how stressed and sad I felt in February and March 2020. I feared for my loved ones' health and safety. I was obsessively reading the news from all over the world, seeing the latest lockdowns and border closures and case counts, and I felt a huge preemptive wave of grief for all the bad news that was coming our way. I kept thinking about all the families who at that moment were still intact and alive, but who were about to lose loved ones to the virus.

And along with all that, I remember being afraid that the pandemic would wipe us out financially. I was afraid for my favorite restaurants and local small businesses that were being forced to shut down in the face of a bizarre new reality where just "being indoors with people" was somehow the worst thing you could do. I tried to prepare for the possibility that I was about to lose every last dollar in my bank account, that I would lose all my clients and freelance gigs, that my family would be permanently impoverished.

Stocks go up, and stocks go down. But if all the stock markets in the world are crashing at once, if we're all living through a global crisis, then we've all got bigger problems to worry about.

COVID recovery and stock market resilience

And yet...despite the human suffering and many tragic deaths, despite all the millions of lost jobs, the worst-case economic scenarios of the pandemic didn't come to pass. Human beings found a way to keep collaborating and innovating and investing.

During the rest of 2020, the stock market soared. By Dec. 31, 2020, the S&P 500 index went up about 63% from its March 20, 2020 lows. During the entire pandemic-wracked year of 2020, the S&P 500 gained about 16%.

Stocks go down, and stocks go up. Bad news doesn't always keep coming forever, and people (and stock markets) find a way to rebuild, adapt, and recover.

How to stop worrying about the stock market

Ever since the COVID Crash, I haven't worried about the stock market. As a long-term investor, your goal should be to just keep working, earning, saving, and buying stocks as part of a disciplined long-range plan. Crises and crashes will happen; we just have to keep living and investing.

There are always ups and downs as an investor, and sometimes big shocks and disappointments. But over time, in the long run (and sometimes in the short run), the stock market can recover from big losses. That's why it's often good to keep buying stocks, even when the market is going down. How consistently you invest is more important than what the stock market does on any given day or year -- even on the best, or worst, days and years.