04-25-2021, 10:33 AM
I am just hard pressed to be bearish for any lengthy period of time. The modern history of markets is up and to the right over any meaningful period of time. There are times where it outperforms the average, and times where it underperforms, but overall the trajectory is growth. The entire premise of dividend growth investing is rooted in that growth (we are wary of the companies that play financial games to juice the dividend, rather than paying them through increasing earnings).
Capitalism is predicated on a model of economic growth, and has been ridiculously successful at it for centuries. If that breaks down, capitalism fails, and gets replaced with something else. All of this discussion then becomes meaningless. There are a lot of very powerful people who think cash is trash, whose trash cash positions are a small part of their overall holdings, but those positions are multiples of all of our equity portfolios combined. Those people have a vested interest in keeping the growth model going. Everything falling apart doesn't serve their interests.
There will be volatility from time to time, corrections, and bear markets, but those are the exception, and not the rule. The wall of worry is real, and as the market makes new highs for the majority of our investing lifetimes, our ill-equipped ape brains stay focused on the few memorable negative events where CNBC said everyone's hair was on fire and we were all going to end up living in cardboard boxes. Markets are as much applied sociology as they are anything to do with economics. In any event, I can't think of anywhere better to park my money.
Capitalism is predicated on a model of economic growth, and has been ridiculously successful at it for centuries. If that breaks down, capitalism fails, and gets replaced with something else. All of this discussion then becomes meaningless. There are a lot of very powerful people who think cash is trash, whose trash cash positions are a small part of their overall holdings, but those positions are multiples of all of our equity portfolios combined. Those people have a vested interest in keeping the growth model going. Everything falling apart doesn't serve their interests.
There will be volatility from time to time, corrections, and bear markets, but those are the exception, and not the rule. The wall of worry is real, and as the market makes new highs for the majority of our investing lifetimes, our ill-equipped ape brains stay focused on the few memorable negative events where CNBC said everyone's hair was on fire and we were all going to end up living in cardboard boxes. Markets are as much applied sociology as they are anything to do with economics. In any event, I can't think of anywhere better to park my money.