That’s why, as a second-best alternative, I hope for something more modest: a choppy market that experiences periodic downturns, but one that trends upward for very long periods.The Stock Market’s MovementsThat is, in fact, a rough description of what the stock market has been like for the past 25 years, according to statistics provided by Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. In that period, the S&P 500 has returned 552.31 percent, or 7.8 percent, annualized, but to garner those handsome returns, an investor would have had to sit tight through countless downturns.While August has so far been a negative month for the stock market, there have been no major downturns this year. Through July, the S&P 500 rose for five consecutive months. Just seven big tech stocks — Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta (Facebook), …
