Pessimists sound smart

As in every weak period in the market, there are those who are calm and collected and those who are in a panic. For the most part, this boils down to time and experience. On social media, there are any number of investors expressing worry and panic about the fall in the equity markets. One typical part of such messages is that there hasn't been such panic for two years, specifically since March 2020. The equally typical response of the experienced investor is equivalent to this kind of view is a derisive "So?" Indeed, for someone who has seen past crashes and invested through them, it's hard to figure out what the panic is about. At this point in time, the large-cap indexes are green by about 7.5 per cent over the last one year. All that has happened is that gains made during the last 10 months have disappeared. For anyone w