I’m 26M, and have been working and investing for 4 years. I haven’t seen a major crash like 2008 or 2022 yet.
How do you deal with seeing so much of your investments go down so quickly, potentially erasing all of your gains over the past few years? Do you hold onto some cash for these buying opportunities in these moments? And what if you need to withdraw money for an emergency during these conditions?
How is your thought process when the market goes down?
byu/slattyblatt instocks
Posted by slattyblatt
42 Comments
Save up your emergency money when times are good, so that you don’t have to sell when times are bad
If you’re young it doesn’t matter, just buy more if you can. And don’t keep your emergency fund in the stock market.
With love, stop buying garbage
I put money in the market each month, but not on a specific day, it’s usually whenever I get around to it, but if I notice the market is down significantly it’s definitely going to be that day.
When did the market go down?
2020, 2022, and a brief dunk in 2025.
Each time I was like, man I should buy more while its low
Couldn’t care less if it goes up or down day to day. I just put auto contributions in every week from my paycheck and forget about it. Not retiring for 30+ years so I’m not concerned with the short term fluctuations.
To quite the genius Warren Buffet: “Freak the fuck out and panic sell everything right now. It’s fucking over.”
Buy good stocks on every dip. Savings account is my emergency money, I only add to my positions or move them around.
After a decade in the market, even big dips don’t feel like the end of the world, just a buying opportunity.
I usually just remind myself it’s normal, keep my emergency cash separate, and try not to panic.. markets always bounce back eventually
Firstly, don’t invest money you might need in the near future, for exactly the reason you said.
Yeah, in a down market i will use some cash from savings to buy into stocks at the lower prices.
If I don’t have the free cash, I just don’t check the App for a while. I’ve invested in things for the mid- to long-term so sometimes you just have to wait. Get on and enjoy life and the market will recover in time.
You use the excitement of buying your favourite stock at a cheaper price to get you through it. The real pain happens when your stocks go down but you don’t have any more money and can’t dollar cost average into it because your Unemployment for example. So to sum it up, just be grateful you finally get to buy the stock at a cheaper price and lower your cost basis.
I try to have have 2-3% cash for selloff contingencies. I have a short list and am looking to buy on sale. Picking the bottom is hard and I’m not great at it. After 2-3 days down, preferably big down days, I’m shopping.
When the market is stable/going up, I’m selling weekly covered calls to replenish my cash. I’m still buying best value on my short list weekly with some of that money.
“And what if you need to withdraw money for an emergency during these conditions?”
Withdraw money for emergencies from your emergency fund…
Thats exactly what goes through my mind:
Fucking hedgies, always cheating and not letting my diversified holding of 1 company go up by 100000000000000%. RC tweeted a green short, that must mean MOASS is about to happen
Edit: oh sorry wrong sub
I wonder what I’m making for dinner tonight
After riding crypto down. It doesn’t affect my sentiment anymore. I see it as an opportunity to swap to levrage etf’s, do a tour arround the house and sell evrything thats loose 😂
Things are On sale, so i buy.
Manage risk.
The market typically does not crash out of nowhere barring a black swan event like COVID.
Overall market conditions can be assessed in a variety of ways, such as longer term moving averages and support levels. You can also use resources like Investors Business Daily that monitor the market trend every day.
When the longer-term market trend weakens, manage risk by raising cash (selling the worst performing stocks) or hedging long-term positions that you do not want to sell such as using put options.
Nobody needs to hold all their stocks through a 50% downturn. There’s a SELL button!
dont invest money you cant afford to lose
Buy good businesses with real earnings that are growing. Buy more when the market goes into correction.
Just panic and sell everything and wait for the market to go back up to buy at the top.
Serious answer – I have a list of companies on my watchlist and it’s easy money to buy a top company like AMZN etc during a market correction
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of studies or analysts that can show that during those major crashes, like 2008 or 2020, if you never sold your portfolio, you’d be more wealthy had you just held.
So, if you want to be MORE wealthy, during a crash do not sell. In fact, it’s the best time to BUY.
I have my main portfolio that I will continue to hold, while adding every month. Then I also put some money into PSA (cash stock that pays a monthly dividend)then when the markets go down, I’ll remove some money out of the PSA to add to my positions when the stock goes “on sale”. Usually I buy more when the market goes down by 10 percent, then more at 20 percent, etc.
Buy low, sell high.
Buy quality stocks and buy the dip of quality stocks. I had to learn the hard way. Penny stocks are gamble, so avoid them plz
Depends what stocks you own. Big drops like 1997, 2008 etc are like a cleansing. You’ll see all the speculative nonsense disappear or rename themselves. People in these will be the ones jumping from tall buildings.
The good (boring) stocks will also drop but they slowly recover over the years.
DCA and time is your friend
You can always try to buy on dips and sell when high etc. But the best long-term strategy is simply to hold and keep investing (assuming you’ve done appropriate research in the company). There’s no point in holding a stock for 10 years if the company is not meeting expectations and the stock is performing poorly; sell and move onto something better. But make sure your decision is informed and rational, and not emotional, then stick to your decision and work towards your goals. As for losing your gains, it will usually bounce back a lot quicker (a gradual 5-year loss won’t take you another 5 years to bounce back, especially if you keep investing). If you look at the S&P500 index, roughly speaking, in the 27 months from January 2021 to April 2023 you lose money, but then within 7 months you are already making new highs and the market boomed all the way up to January 2025.
Greed
“Nice, I get more for for my dollar now so I’ll buy more”
By seeing it as an opportunity, which it is, if you take the long view. If you’re a short term investor, and or, retiring tomorrow and need that $ now, then it’s a reason to stress. I get downright giddy when the market dips and some stocks I want more of drop to a price I think is a must buy. I’m a slow and conservative investor myself. At your age, I opened a few funds that were well rated, attached to my bank account to send flat amount each month for the cost averaging, and didn’t pay any attention to it for a long time. Those funds did OK, I worked on other investments like a home and such.
You’re young, crashes erase “gains” short-term but set up bigger compounded growth later. Focus on solid, diversified investments and live your life.
I view both ups and downs as an opportunity. When it goes down you can get quality stocks on the cheap (my first thought is buying low cost index funds) and when it goes up you are accumulating unrealized gains. If you can’t handle volatility then buy VFIAX and don’t look at it until you retire. Buy more when it drops. I have a number in mind that I keep in my checking account for emergencies, I never invest below that number. Those are my general guidelines. Anytime I have anxiety I just look at the S&P’s complete price history. It’s up and to the right.
I buy more. It’s hard to see balances go down, but I also love seeing my cost basis go down.
I been through 3 crashes and I lose my shit every time it happens. I only bought as heavily as I did in April because im a Trump supporter and was in disbelief he would let the market fall as much as it did
How I deal: By knowing that after each of those crashes, and after EVERY crash in history, the market has fully recovered and gone much higher than it was before the crash. By knowing that I’m not losing a dime unless I actually sell. So it’s not erasing any gains. Think of yourself going up into the mountains. You are going up, but at many points you go back down. You don’t freak out when you go downhill do you? No because you know the net result will be an increase in elevation. If you were close to retiring, it would be a different story, but you have decades so if there is a crash you have a ton of time for it to recover and go far higher.
How I deal: By knowing that trying to work the system, time the market, etc, has almost always left me in a worse position than just holding. As a young person, learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them. Just DCA and don’t worry about the daily ups and downs, it’s like a hilly road, that’s normal. Don’t check the market on a daily basis, it just causes stress and doesn’t help one bit. check it every once in a while.
Holding cash: NO. I don’t hold cash out of the market just waiting for dips, because the majority of the time you will miss out on more gains than the losses from the dip. Who knows how long it will be until a dip comes.
When the “market goes down” buy as much of as many good companies as possible while they’re on sale. When individual stocks go down for reasons not related to the general market, closely reexamine those businesses.
No “emergency money” should be invested in the stock market.
If investments are down, so is your emergency fund. And if investments are up, why would you to take your money out for an emergency at the exact moment when your winners are running.
I have trailing stops, when the next crash hits I’ll probably cash out completely and just sit in my cash until the dust settles and buy back in. Did this during the 2025 Trump Slump and ended the year with 70% gains.
Perspective.
Stocks go up = I’m doing well
Stocks go down = They are on special offer
If good companies buy more. I’d speculative hold
Long term, any crashes are great buying opportunity. Investment usually rebound within a year or two so at bottom of a crash is when I rebalance my portfolio (ie: sell cheap, buy cheap, with higher potential of growth in different sector).
Buy more