Yes, Bull Markets Are Hard Too

Everyone assumes the hard part of investing is sticking it out during a downturn. True — but staying invested during a bull market is its own kind of difficult, for a completely different reason.

Investor Howard Marks explained it well: when you own something that’s been climbing for years, the temptation to sell grows right along with the gains. News, emotion, the fact that you’ve already made good money, or the lure of some shinier new idea — any of it can talk you into cashing out early.

Consider everything long-term investors have had to sit through since the last major downturn ended: a feared double-dip recession, a credit downgrade, a currency crisis overseas, Brexit, an inverted yield curve, a global shutdown, the highest inflation in decades, a regional bank collapse, and multiple rounds of trade-war anxiety. And yet, through all of it, long-term diversified returns have outpaced the long-run historical average.

This year alone has brought fears about AI disruption, geopolitical conflict, renewed inflation, and spiking energy prices — and markets are still up meaningfully year to date. Even a sharp, scary pullback in a single sector recently reminded everyone how quickly sentiment can swing, right after that same sector had just posted one of its best short-term runs ever.

The lesson isn’t that bad headlines don’t matter. It’s that successful investing requires tolerating more uncertainty, in both directions, than feels comfortable — whether markets are falling or rising.

I think of Proverbs 21:5: “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance.” Diligence there doesn’t mean constant activity — it means steady, patient faithfulness to a good plan, especially when everything around you is tempting you to abandon it.

Bull market or bear market, the discipline required is the same. Stay the course.