As long as there has been a stock market, it has gone up and down. In this chart of the Dow, you can clearly see how the stock market has continually moved in cycles from 1900 to the present.
Two things stand about the chart:
1. The market follows a cyclical pattern: it goes up, then down again, then up again, down again, over and over. That makes it a no-brainer to declare it will go down again—it always does. Always.
2. The good news is: it always goes up again, too. The news gets even better: as you can tell from the chart: the ups outweigh the downs by handsome margin over time.
Before we continue, let's clarify what we mean by a crash. The market never goes up in a straight line: there are always dips and peaks as it generally moves up. However, there are a few drops which goes way beyond what we could call "normal." Two recent examples were the "dot-com" bust right after 2000 and the 2008 market crash. If you look at this Google Finance chart of the S&P 500 you can see the distinction between the small dips and two major crashes clearly:
Now you can see why saying the market will crash is the easy part — it always does. The hard part is: when will that happen next?
Two things stand about the chart:
1. The market follows a cyclical pattern: it goes up, then down again, then up again, down again, over and over. That makes it a no-brainer to declare it will go down again—it always does. Always.
2. The good news is: it always goes up again, too. The news gets even better: as you can tell from the chart: the ups outweigh the downs by handsome margin over time.
Before we continue, let's clarify what we mean by a crash. The market never goes up in a straight line: there are always dips and peaks as it generally moves up. However, there are a few drops which goes way beyond what we could call "normal." Two recent examples were the "dot-com" bust right after 2000 and the 2008 market crash. If you look at this Google Finance chart of the S&P 500 you can see the distinction between the small dips and two major crashes clearly:
Now you can see why saying the market will crash is the easy part — it always does. The hard part is: when will that happen next?
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