Recently, I had a chance to preview a personal finance book by a best-selling author that focused on how to build and manage your wealth. During the process of reading an early draft of the book, it struck me that it is easy for many to think of wealth building and wealth management as the same thing. However, they are distinctly different and should be considered separately.
During most years, the stock market tends to go up in value, 73% of the time since 1928, to be precise.1 Using historical returns as an indicator, in any given year, you’re usually better off investing in ‘the market’ than not investing at all.
Unfortunately, the S&P 500 (often referred to as the ‘the market’), is having one of its worst starts to the year ever and at the time of this writing, the index is down nearly 20% from its January highs.
