The past few years have been a wild ride in the stock market. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) -- which is often used to gauge the overall stock market's performance -- declined over 30% at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, went on a bull run that doubled its value from March 2020 to December 2021, and then snapped back to reality, declining just over 19% in 2022.

Many other major companies and indexes have followed the same trend in the past few years. For new investors, this wild ride may be hard to grasp, but for investors who've been around a while, it reinforces one point about the stock market: Bear markets are inevitable.

So knowing this, the one lesson investors should never forget is that bear markets are a chance for opportunity, not panic.

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Source Fool.com