Robert Brokamp

In other words, the market has been profitable or lost less than 10% in almost 88% of calendar years.

There are four decades that didn't see any years of 10% plus declines, those being the 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, and the 2010s.

How much does that history matter?

We at The Motley Fool believe that the stock market is the best path to long-term wealth, and we have the historical data to back it up.

But how much does history matter in our ever-changing world and what past trends are likely to persist?

Here to talk about that and much more is Ryan Dietrich, the chief market strategist at Carson Group, the co-host of the Facts vs. Feelings podcast, and one of my favorite sources of insightful or just fun stats about the market.

Ryan, welcome to Motley Fool Money.

Thank you for those kind words, and it's great to have you here.

In your podcasts, your articles, your social media posts, you provide just a regular stream of facts about historical trends.

With much of that data going back to 1950s, sometimes as far back as the 1920s, what do you say to someone who says, things are different today?

Way back then, they didn't have the internet, they didn't have low-cost index funds, commission-free trading apps in our pockets.

We've transitioned from an industrial to a services economy.

How much does history matter?

A lot of what you do in your writing is to say, okay, this is a current set of circumstances.

And based on history, this is the likelihood that the market will go up.

Here's the median and average return.

How do you distinguish between trends that are valid versus a spurious correlation, which is borrowing from the title of one of your recent articles?

By the way, the median return, almost 15%.

Very good news.

As you just hinted at there, you cover a lot of ground in your articles, podcasts, on social media, macro, some fundamental, even some technical analysis.