Since the lows in March of 2020, the stock market has doubled. Think about that for a moment. The S&P 500 closed at 2,237 on March 23 of that year and closed Wednesday at 4,402, just shy of an incredible 100% gain in 17 months. Numerous reasons have been cited for this, including the incredibly loose monetary policy that has been in place for years but went nuclear when the COVID-19 virus showed up in the winter of 2020. Toss in the Reddit/WallStreetBets crowd, which had government handouts to trade with while locked at home, and you had all the ingredients for the proverbial melt-up, and maybe a meltdown.
The truly scary situation for investors is that the market hasn’t had a 5% correction in almost a year, which is very unusual. The difficult question for investors is what to do now?