Investors: You're About to Make Your Worst Mistake
After more than a decade of steadily rising prices, the stock market has gone into freefall in the past month. Uncertainty about the COVID-19 pandemic has the entire world more nervous than ever, and that's made it nearly impossible to predict how long the new bear market will last or how low it will go.
Bear markets bring plenty of investment mistakes to the forefront, especially among newer investors who've never seen one before. The obvious one that you've been coached over and over to avoid is selling when the market is plunging. Yet even if you're able to control your emotions well enough not to make that simple mistake, there's a more sinister pitfall that snares even more investors if they're not careful to avoid it.
Long-term investors know that if you want to make money in the stock market, you have to be willing to endure downturns like the one we're going through right now. It might seem like timing the market would be easy, but in reality, those who try to buy and sell frequently end up losing more in profits from having been out of the market at the wrong time than they gain by being out at the right time.
Source Fool.com
