What To Do When The Stock Market Crashes

By J.D. Roth March 9 2020

Can you feel it? There's panic in the streets! We're in the middle of a stock market crash and the hysteria is starting again. As I write this, the S&P 500 is down six percent today — and 17.3% off its record high of 3386.15 on February 19th. S&P 500 status

Media outlets everywhere are sharing panicked headlines. Panicked headlines

All over the TV and internet, other financial reporters are filing similar stories. And why not? This stuff sells. It's the financial equivalent of the old reporter's adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Here's the top story at USA Today at this very moment: USA Today headline

But here's the thing: To succeed at investing, you have to pull yourself away from the financial news. You have to ignore it. All it'll do is make you crazy.

Note: This is an updated version of the article I publish whenever the stock market crashes. I last shared it on 21 January 2016. Some comments are from previous versions of the piece.

Bad Behavior

The sad truth is that people tend to pour money into stocks during bull markets — after the stocks have been rising for some time. Speculators pile on, afraid to miss out. Then they panic and bail out after during a stock market crash. By buying high and selling low, they lose a lot.

It's often small individual investors like you and me who make these mistakes. During the Great Recession, one Get Rich Slowly reader shared the following story:

“I'm in the [financial] industry…I can tell you now that when the markets tanked during October [2008], people with less than (approximately) 100k behaved significantly different from investors with 100k+ in the market. Also, people who did not have an emergency fund behaved significantly different than those who did, generally to their own detriment.

“These actions lead me to believe that people with substantial assets tend to ride out the market and not worry about short-term fluctuations, whereas people with smaller amounts of assets lock in losses by removing assets from the market at poor times. Then, when/if they get back in, they’ve missed out on several days of big gains…

“As it was happening I was shocked by the clear income demarcation that seemed to separate rational behavior from irrational behavior. Do small investors make behavioral mistakes that keep them from becoming wealthy?“

Instead of selling during a downturn, it's better to buck the trend. Follow the advice of billionaire Warren Buffett, the world's greatest investor: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

In his 1997 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett made a brilliant analogy: “If you plan to eat hamburgers throughout your life and are not a cattle producer, should you wish for higher or lower prices for beef?” You want lower prices, of course: If you're going to eat lots of burgers over the next 30 years, you want to buy them cheap.

Buffett completes his analogy by asking, “If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period?”

Even though they're decades away from retirement, most investors get excited when stock prices rise (and panic when they fall). Buffett points out that this is the equivalent of rejoicing because they're paying more for hamburgers, which doesn't make any sense: “Only those who will [sell] in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise.” He's driving home the age-old wisdom to buy low and sell high.

Doing this can be tough. For one thing, it goes against your gut. During a stock market crash, the last thing you want to do is buy more. Besides, how do you know the market is near its peak or its bottom? The truth is you don't. The best solution is to make regular, planned investments — no matter whether the market is high or low.

Meanwhile, ignore the financial news.

No News is Good News

The mass media is in the business of selling news, and to do that, they sensationalize it. Fueled by the over-eager reporting, irrational exuberance can quickly turn to pervasive gloom. Neither state of mind makes sense. They're both extremes that lead investors to make poor choices.

For example, I know a couple of people who “invested” in Bitcoin when it was all over the news. Now they wish they hadn't but they bought into the hype. My brother lost two homes to foreclosure and declared bankruptcy because he bought into the U.S. housing bubble during the mid 2000s.

Meanwhile, the people I know who ignore financial tend to prosper.

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