“Stocks are the best long term investments”
“Markets will always bounce back”
“Always buy post a devastating crash”
A lot of investment strategies and long-term portfolios are built around these notions—which have been reinforced time and again by the popular media and the stories of people who made it big through a disciplined long-term approach.
No concrete definition of long term is presented and it has been observed that stocks can remain low for a considerable amount of time due to various factors like negative feedback loops.
An average long-term investment horizon could be anywhere between 10-20 years given the fact that the accumulation and winding-up process also eats up time which is required for compounding growth to take place.
If you happen to sit out of one roaring bull market cycle or are unlucky enough to get caught in a bearish phase, then chances of financial ruin go up manifold.
The real challenge is how one avoids all the noise and focuses on the building blocks of robust portfolio construction activity.
BTW the word Covid/Corona has already been used more than 2 billion times in media (all the sources) and its competitors (AIDS, SARS, MARS) pale in comparison—none reached even a 100 million mark!