Jason Zweig

And they're going up, so I'm going to buy them anyway.

And then when they go down, instead of telling ourselves, oh, they've just gotten cheaper, they're on sale, people say, I don't want it anymore because it went down.

So when you buy and hold, particularly if you buy and hold one or a few index funds, you short circuit all of those problems and you eliminate that friction.

Well, I think like a lot of people, I had all kinds of concerns.

I guess I was a little...

skeptical that we would have a really positive return because both 2023 and 24 had been very robust years.

And often the stock market goes up three years in a row and it can go up more years in a row than that.

But

Those were two very good returns.

And so I was like, maybe we'll get like a slightly positive year.

And of course, it turned out the S&P 500 was up like 17.9%.

Yeah, a blockbuster.

despite Ukraine, despite tariffs, despite the stuff about the Fed, Gaza, you know, you name it, just went up.

Well, the stock market went up because corporate earnings went up.

And earnings went up in a period of...

You know, relatively low interest rates, exports by U.S.

companies did quite well, partly because the U.S.

dollar dropped a bit.

And all of those things combined to produce, you know, just enormous profits.

for U.S.