4 Investing Strategies to Prepare for Bear Markets
1. Know that you have the resources to weather a crisis
“Some people panic in a bear market because they don’t know whether they have enough cash to handle near-term goals,” says Mark Riepe, managing director of the Schwab Center for Financial Research. Ideally, you won’t have to face this question in a crisis—because you should know the answer.
If you’re retired, knowing that you have the next 12 months of living expenses in a bank account or money market fund—and a few more years’ worth in bonds that mature when you need the money—can help keep you calm and clear-headed, Mark says.
“You’re going to react a lot differently than someone who gets blindsided and has never laid that groundwork. It’s not just about your risk tolerance, which is your ability to emotionally handle big price swings and losses,” he adds. “It’s about your financial capacity to handle risk. In other words, can you afford to take a loss?”
You might feel risk tolerant, but if you haven’t structured your investments to handle a sharp drop, you may have to make painful adjustments to your lifestyle when the crisis happens.
2. Match your money to your goals
Map out a plan that takes into account what you’re saving for, whether near-term expenses or future financial goals like college tuition or retirement. Structure your portfolio to match those goals. Money that you’ll need in the short term or that you can’t afford to lose—the down payment on a home, for example—is best invested in relatively stable assets, such as money market funds, certificates of deposit (CDs), or Treasury bills. Goals that need funding in three to five years should be addressed with a mixture of investment-grade bonds and CDs. For money you won’t need for five or more years, consider assets with the potential to grow, such as stocks, which are more volatile.
3. Remember: Downturns don’t last
The Schwab Center for Financial Research looked at both bull and bear markets for the S&P 500® Index going back to the late ’60s and found that the average bull ran for about six years, delivering an average cumulative return of over 200%. The average bear market lasted roughly 15 months, delivering an average cumulative loss of 38.4%. The longest of the bears was a little more than two years—and was followed by a nearly five-year bull run. The shortest was the pandemic-fueled bear market in early 2020, which lasted a mere 33 days.
How does this impact your bear market kit? Even if you find yourself headed into the second year of a bear market, remember that it won’t last. No bull market endures forever; neither does a bear. And historically, the market’s upward movement has tended to prevail over the declines long term.
4. Keep your portfolio diversified
Let’s say there is a slump—is there a remedy to help your portfolio get back on its feet?
Being well diversified can help cushion against losses. In every bear market there are likely certain segments of the markets that get hit much harder than others. It’s extremely difficult to forecast these ahead of time, so a preventive measure you can take now is to diversify within the equity market as well as across asset classes. Consider the assets you’ve set aside for medium-term needs or goals. Being diversified means you have a wide variety of investment-grade bonds—corporate, municipals, Treasuries, and possibly foreign issues. And they should have varying maturity dates, from short-term to mid-term, so you always have some bonds maturing and providing you with either income or money to reinvest.
Your long-term assets should be divvied up among a wide array of domestic stocks—big and small, fast-growing and dividend-paying—as well as international stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and commodities, says Mark. That mix gives you exposure to asset classes that tend to move at different times and speeds, he says.
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