A quick announcement before I begin today’s post –
My new book, Boundless, is now available for ordering!
After a wonderful response during the pre-order phase, I finally have the book in my hands and am shipping it out quickly. If you’d like to get your copy, click here to order now. You can also enjoy lower prices on multiple-copy orders.
Plus, I’m offering a special combo discount if you order Boundless along with my first book, The Sketchbook of Wisdom. Click here to order your set.
I was obsessed with cricket during my school days. There was a chance to represent my school in a match against a visiting South African U-19 side, and I was pushing hard to secure a place in the final eleven for our team.
I played as a leg spinner. And if you’ve ever bowled leg spin, you know it’s a bowling style that dances on the edge of brilliance and disaster. I often struggled during practice matches and net sessions. One delivery would turn sharply, the next would land halfway down the pitch and disappear into the trees. Some days I felt unstoppable. On most others, I felt like I didn’t belong.
After one particularly frustrating session, I told my coach I was thinking of giving it up. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this,” I said.
He looked at me, and said something I didn’t fully understand back then:
You don’t walk away just because it’s hard. You stay the course. You signed up for this. The long road is the only road worth taking.
Well, I stayed the course, and ended up playing for my team. We lost the match. But I played, and played well.
I didn’t know it then, but my cricket coach’s words would return years later to help me. Not in the middle of a cricket field, because I stopped playing after school, but while watching my investments go through upheavals during market crashes. And there have been several during my 22-year journey as an investor so far.
Staying the course
At multiple points during our investing lives, the market throws tantrums. Today is one such day. Portfolios are bleeding, and panic seems to be setting in. It’s during these moments, when your stomach turns and your conviction wavers, that you must remind yourself that this is what you signed up for.
We like to think of investing as a rational pursuit. But when prices fall sharply, emotions spill into our hearts and our heads. The mind starts negotiating: “Maybe I should sell now and get back in later… maybe this time really is different.”
But the uncomfortable truth about investing in the stock market is that volatility is not a detour on the investing road. It is the road. And if you have to travel long to meet your financial goals, you must travel through it.
When we start investing, we see the charts of the glorious upward slope of compounding over decades. We read stories of patient investors who held through thick and thin and emerged victorious. But between the starting point and the pot of gold, there’s something most of us gloss over: the cost.
I am not talking about management or brokerage fees here. Not even taxes. The real cost of investing is emotional discomfort.
You don’t get 12-15% annual returns without signing up for 30-40% drawdowns. You don’t get the magic of compounding without enduring periods that test your sanity. As Morgan Housel wrote:
Volatility is the price of admission—the prize inside is superior long-term returns.
When markets are calm, everyone nods in agreement. But when the storm arrives, we look for the exit.
I agree that it’s not easy to sit still. After all, human nature is not wired for uncertainty. Our ancestors survived by reacting quickly to threats. A rustle in the bushes meant danger. In today’s markets, a red ticker has the same effect. Selling feels like action, and action feels like control.
But most of the time, doing nothing is the action. It’s the hardest thing to do, and often the most effective.
Every seasoned investor eventually learns that the biggest risk isn’t external. It’s internal. It’s not inflation, recessions, geopolitics, or tariffs that derail wealth creation, but ourselves, acting on emotion instead of reason.
Let’s Reframe Volatility
One of the most powerful mental shifts I’ve learned in investing is to reframe volatility not as risk, but as opportunity. Volatility is the stock market throwing a sale, and most people running for the exits.
When you buy great businesses or mutual funds at lower prices, you’re effectively buying future corporate earnings at a discount. But that only works if you’re still in the game, and if you’re not sitting in cash waiting for the “all clear” sign (which never comes).
And let’s be clear: staying the course doesn’t mean being reckless. It means having a plan, which includes asset allocation, diversification, and rebalancing, and sticking to it when it feels hardest. That plan should have accounted for tough times. Because tough times are always part of the plan.
Now, what does staying the course look like? Here are a few quick pointers I can think of:
- Do nothing when tempted to do something. When everything is red, the urge to sell will feel rational. But that’s often when your future returns are being born.
- Avoid checking your portfolio too often. If your investment horizon is 10+ years, daily or weekly price movements are irrelevant. They only serve to mess with your emotions.
- Tune out the noise. Financial media thrives on panic. Remember, their job is to get your attention, not to help you build wealth. Just tune that out.
- Focus on process, not outcomes. A well-thought-out investment process will occasionally lead to short-term pain. That doesn’t mean the process is flawed.
- Talk to your past self. Imagine the version of you who invested when markets were calm. What would they want you to do now? Probably… nothing.
- Zoom out. When in doubt, pull up a long-term chart of the market. The short-term dips become almost invisible over decades.
Final Thought: You Knew This Was Coming
Except the financial influencers and the shouting heads on media and social media, no one promised you a smooth ride. In fact, every intelligent investing book, every sensible financial mentor, and every past bad market must have told you this was coming. Maybe not the exact reason and maybe not the timing, but the fact that a downturn or a big crash would come was guaranteed.
So if you’re feeling anxious, that’s okay. You’re human. But don’t let that anxiety steer the ship. Remind yourself gently but firmly: This is what I signed up for.
If your financial goals haven’t changed, your investment strategy probably shouldn’t either.
A market crash isn’t a glitch in the system. This is the system.
And the best way through is not around it, but through it.
So relax.
Step back.
And stay the course.
That’s all you have in your control.
P.S. Maybe, this advice from Rudyard Kipling’s If inscribed at the entrance to Wimbledon’s Centre Court—a perfect reminder to players as they prepare to face their next big challenge on the court—should also help you see things in clearer light.
The Sketchbook of Wisdom: A Hand-Crafted Manual on the Pursuit of Wealth and Good Life.
This is a masterpiece.
– Morgan Housel, Author, The Psychology of Money
