There's little question that 2020 is going to be a year that people will be talking about for a long time to come. It's been an especially volatile year for Wall Street and investors.
In a roughly four-month span between mid-February and mid-June, the benchmark S&P 500 experienced about 10 years' worth of volatility. It took less than five weeks for the broad-based index to lose more than a third of its value, which marked the fastest descent from an all-time high in history. Then, over the following 11 weeks, the stock market rebounded ferociously, erasing much of its losses. In fact, the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite has gone on to hit multiple record closing highs.
If there's one thing that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has taught investors, it's the importance of thinking long term. No matter how grim things may look, every single correction in history prior to COVID-19 has eventually been erased by a bull-market rally.