The 1 Thing Every Investor Needs to Know About Surviving a Bear Market

The article emphasizes that investors should remain fully invested during bear markets despite their severity (averaging 35% declines over 289 days). The key insight is that missing the early stages of bull market recoveries is costly—over one-third of the S&P 500's largest single-day gains occur in the first two months of recovery, with average gains of 13.6% in the first month and 25.3% in the first three months. Since timing the market is nearly impossible, staying invested through downturns is the optimal long-term strategy.