Here's a Bear Market Lesson You Can't Forget

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. 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.