If a Stock Market Crash Is on the Way, History Says This Is the Smartest Thing Investors Can Do

3 weeks ago 12

Adam Spatacco, The Motley Fool

Mon, July 20, 2026 astatine 11:35 AM CDT 3 min read

The banal marketplace has agelong been 1 of the astir reliable paths to make wealth. Since the artificial quality (AI) gyration ignited successful precocious November 2022, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) has gained a cumulative 83%, propelled by innovation and expanding firm profits successful exertion and related sectors.

^SPX Chart

^SPX information by YCharts.

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These advances reenforce the entreaty of stocks for semipermanent investors who simply enactment the course. At the aforesaid time, the market's elevated valuation and dense attraction successful a fistful of ascendant names person sparked increasing speculation that a meaningful correction -- oregon adjacent a carnivore marketplace -- could prevarication ahead.

Understanding however the banal marketplace moves

Stocks bash not question successful a consecutive enactment upward oregon downward. Instead, they determination done cycles of enlargement and contraction that bespeak the macroeconomic situation and shifts successful capitalist psychology.

Declining banal prices often coincide with recessions, erstwhile the system begins to amusement weakness with declining maturation rates. Selling unit tin besides look independently of economical downturns. When firm profits autumn abbreviated of optimistic forecasts that are already priced into stocks, investors whitethorn determine to fastener successful gains. This profit-taking tin rapidly snowball into broader selling.

Understanding these ebbs and flows arsenic mean features of the banal marketplace -- alternatively than anomalies -- allows investors to digest downturns with greater composure alternatively of panic.

Silhouettes of a bull and carnivore  facing 1  another.

Image source: Getty Images.

What lessons tin beryllium learned from anterior downturns?

Since 2000, the S&P 500 has recorded 4 chiseled carnivore markets:

  • Dot-com bust: 49% diminution

  • 2008 fiscal crisis: 57% diminution

  • COVID-19 crash: 34% diminution

  • 2022 carnivore market: 25% diminution

In the illustration below, I've annotated recessions successful the gray-shaded columns. History shows that the marketplace yet recovered from each of these episodes and moved connected to notch caller all-time highs. Even earlier this year, the S&P 500 pulled backmost 7% arsenic investors took profits aft years of beardown AI-driven gains, combined with questions astir whether net maturation would proceed astatine the antecedently assumed gait we've witnessed implicit the past fewer years.

As always, the marketplace absorbed the selling pressure, yet stabilized, and resumed its upward trajectory.

^SPX Chart

^SPX information by YCharts.

How tin investors respond to uncertainty?

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