STOCK MARKET HITS ALL TIME HIGHS - TIME TO SELL!!

What's up you guys, it's Graham here. So we've seen it again: stocks have just hit all-time highs. But the real question remains, how high can this go? And also, should we just sell it all? I feel like so many people are sitting on the edge of their seat, watching this all unfold, seeing stocks hit all-time highs, and thinking to themselves, "Wait a second! Why the hell would I ever invest in the stock market when we're at an all-time high? Isn't the way to do this whole investing thing buy low, sell high?"

So, I'll shed some light on this because I really feel that this will help put it in perspective. To start this video, let me give you a quick disclosure: that no one out there can accurately predict the market. It could very well go up for another several years, it could go down next week, it could go down right after I post this video, or it could go up. The thing is, no one can accurately and consistently predict what the market will be doing.

Now, the people who do claim they know what the market is going to be doing are much like a broken clock, and that a broken clock is right twice a day. But what happens, though, is that it's very easy for people to talk about the stock market's just collapsing any day now or any month now. But what ends up happening when these heavy hitters are wrong about their predictions is that nothing happens. People ignore them, and people simply just move on.

But what happens here is that these same people keep making predictions, and eventually, guess what? One of those predictions is going to come true. And then all of a sudden, they're gonna look at that and gonna say, "You know what? I told you guys stock market was about to crash, and it did. Look at this! I called it! I said it! It was about to crash and it did!" And then everyone praises that person and then seems to ignore all of the dozens of times that they've been wrong.

With that said, here's some perspective in regards to the stock market. In May of 2013, stocks hit all-time highs. When they did, panic ensued. People were saying it is a bubble, it's about to crash any day now, best to probably keep a lot of cash, best to probably buy gold and silver. At that time, the S&P 500 was sixteen hundred and thirty dollars.

Then we hit April 1st, 2014. Stocks again hit all-time highs, and again people panicked and they said prepare for a mass sell-off. Stocks just hit all-time highs, we're about to see a big crash here; probably best just to sell it off. At that time, the S&P 500 was eighteen hundred and sixty dollars.

Then we hit April 23rd, 2015. Stocks hit all-time highs, and again panic ensued, and people were claiming, "Get ready for a bumpy ride! Stocks, sir, how much higher can this go? Get ready, you guys, just brace for the worst!" At that time, the S&P 500 was trading for two thousand eighty dollars.

Then we have August 8th, 2016. Stocks hit all-time highs despite warnings—uh-oh!—warnings about the stock market being overvalued. It's probably best maybe just to cash out now and sell because right now we've hit an all-time high. This is probably gonna be as good as it gets, you guys, cause the S&P at this point is twenty-one hundred and eighty dollars.

But then we hit August 1st, 2017. Stocks again, guess what, you probably know if I now hit all-time highs. You know what? This is as good as it gets. I mean, if we're not in a bubble now, we're for sure in a bubble! News like this sells, so let's just say the stock market is about to crash any moment now! It's hit new peak bubble levels, and this is it.

At this point, the S&P 500 is trading for two thousand four hundred dollars. Now, August 29th, 2018, stocks hit record highs, and the S&P 500 is trading over two thousand nine hundred. So anyway, here's what I'm getting at here: Over time, the stock market is always consistently, at some point or another, going to be hitting all-time highs.

Let's even go all the way back to February 1985, when the S&P 500 was trading at its all-time high of one hundred seventy-nine dollars. Did this mean it was a bad time to invest simply because it was at an all-time high? Well, if we look just two years forward to February 1st, 1987, the S&P 500 was trading for two hundred seventy-four dollars. That, you guys, is a fifty-five percent increase above the previous all-time high two years prior.

But let's just assume for a second that you decided to go Yolo and invest all of your money in February 1988 for two hundred seventy-four dollars. Well, guess what? One year later, it was worth less. So does that mean you got a bad deal? And this is proof that you should not be investing at all-time highs?

The answer to this is no because if you simply didn't sell and you held on to it, just one year later, you would have all of your money back plus dividends. And we could all do the math here that if you bought in at two hundred seventy-four dollars in 1988, it's worth considerably more today, where the S&P 500 is trading for over two thousand nine hundred dollars.

But here's the point I'm really getting at: Over time, stocks will always be consistently hitting all-time highs. They have in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, all the way to today. They've been hitting all-time highs, and as markets just naturally increase over time, this is just something that we're going to have to get used to, thankfully.

But the real reality is, can we consistently predict whether the market will be going up? And the answer is no. Can we predict when the market is going to be going down? The answer is no. Could there be a price decrease over the next year? Very much so. Could the price go down for the next three or four years? And the answer is it could.

Could prices go up for the next few years? The answer is maybe; it could. Could the prices just stay the same? I don't know, maybe. Given this, we can only really base our investing strategy off of what we know, which tends to be long-term historical trends.

Now, the safest and most profitable investing strategy out there is simply just this: save your money, buy when you can, buy consistently. Don't worry whether you're buying low and selling high, simply just buy and never sell, and that's it. It's as simple as that.

Now, will there be years that the market goes down in price? One hundred percent, yes. Will there be years that markets go up in price? The answer is one hundred percent, yes. And the long-term trend, over like twenty or thirty years, should overall be fairly positive.

The reality is that panic or alarmist news articles and clickbait titles, just like my video, get views. They attract more attention, and people are more likely to watch fear. We're more likely to engage in it than they are just like, "Well, the stock market is doing fairly well, you know, it's all pretty optimistic." That doesn't get attention, that doesn't get ad space, that doesn't get views or clicks. What gets clicks is, "Stock market's about to crash! Here's what you need to know right now!"

Now, of course, be vigilant of global trends and be aware of what the economy is doing, especially local economies. But at the same time, don't necessarily dictate a fear of what could happen to impact any of your investment strategies. The best investment strategy, again, out there is simply buy and hold long-term.

And one last note before I finish up this video is that it's very true what they say: that time in the market beats timing the market. Now consider this: If you've invested in the S&P 500 over the last ten years, your return would be approximately seven point two percent annually.

If you missed out on just the top five trading days over the last ten years, your return would drop to just over five percent. Then if you missed the best ten days of trading over the last ten years, your return would only be three and a half percent. If you ended up missing the top twenty days over the last ten years, your return would only be one point one five percent. And if you missed the top forty days of trading over the last ten years, your return would actually be negative two point eight percent.

Remember, this is over ten years. We're talking about just missing a few of the best days over ten years. That's how impactful it is that time in the market is almost always better than timing the market.

And lastly, I saw this online, and I thought this was hilarious and a perfect example for this video. Since 2012, these were all the big-shot economists that were predicting the market crash. Let me read some of these to you. So we got July 31st, 2012, Paul Farrell says, "The real crash is dead ahead." Marc Faber says November 13, 2012, "Prepare for a massive meltdown."

Marc Faber then says August 8th, 2013, "Stocks to end the year twenty percent lower." Paul B. Farrell again says February 24th, 2014, "Crash of 2014, it's like 1929, you'll never see it coming." Even Ron Paul was saying stocks are in a bubble and will crash. Carl Icahn, September 30th, 2015, "Danger ahead."

Paul B. Farrell again, March 1st, 2015, "The crash of 2016 really is coming." Then just a few months later, he says the same thing: one hundred percent risk of a fifty percent crash if Trump wins nomination. Guys, that's a hundred percent risk; that means it's like it's certain the market is going to crash. Still waiting!

And then Marc Faber again, October 17th, 2017, "A major stock market correction is coming." And my favorite one here is right now, it's basically, I think he just gave up at this point. I mean, it's like I've been wrong for such a long time, so let me just say this: Marc Faber is September 20th, 2017, "Something will happen."

But you know what? The reality of this is that one day they're going to be right. They're gonna claim that they predicted this, that they were right, that everyone should listen to them. They're gonna get lucrative book deals, and all of these—they're gonna get money from this. But the reality is that, again, a broken clock is always right twice a day.

Now again, for disclosure, I'm not saying here that the markets will always be going up. Like I said, a year from now, we can look at this video; the markets could be down fifteen percent, and you can go and look at me and say, "But, but Graham, you were wrong!"

Again, I'm not predicting the markets consistently always going up. I'm not telling you guys the market is going to be seven or ten percent higher next year. I'm not telling you what's going to go down next year. All I'm saying is this: that long-term, the trend always tends to be upwards.

We're talking about twenty or thirty years. The short term is unpredictable. Could it be higher next year? Yes. Could it be lower next year? Yes. I have no prediction in this whatsoever. My only prediction is this: that thirty years from now, twenty or thirty years from now, we'll see a price higher than where we are now.

Given the long-term historic trends over the last, like, one hundred years of the S&P 500, I think it's fairly safe to assume that long-term, thirty years from now, on average, we can see somewhere around a seven percent return, maybe eight percent, could be six percent, somewhere around there.

Long-term doesn't mean it's going to be that every single year. There will be years it goes down twenty percent and years it goes up twenty percent. The long term always tends to go up, and that's the whole point of this video: all-time highs don't really matter. The peaks, we're always going to be hitting peaks. Just invest long-term, save when you can, and that's what you can stash away for long term.

That's it! So as always, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Again, if you enjoy videos like this, make sure to click the like button. And also, if you've watched it all the way through and you haven't already subscribed yet, make sure to smash that subscribe button. I post three videos a week, so if you want to be a part of it, feel free to add me there.

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