The Financial Statistic That Runs My Life

The S&P 500 has never delivered negative returns over any 20-year rolling period. Never. Not through the Great Depression, World Wars, 2008, or any pandemic or crisis in between. In fact, the longer you hold, the more that probability of losing money approaches zero — by the time you're near that 20-year mark, it becomes virtually impossible.

Money goes in for twenty years. More money comes out. Every single time. Said another way? The market always goes up over time.

That's it. That's the statistic that runs my entire financial life and shapes how I fundamentally see the world and the stock market.

Once you get down to it you're really just betting on the majority of humans doing something generally positive and helpful each day. What the heck else do we all do every day?

The market always goes up because the alternative is that human civilization stops progressing.

This is the entire strategy:

1. Buy broad index
2. Don't sell for 20 years

That's it. A boring, simple bet on humanity that has never lost. It's just the don't sell part that trips people up.