From everyone at ShareBuilder 401k, we hope you, your friends, family and broader communities are staying safe and healthy through the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation.
We’re Prepared and Here to Help
Operating as a nimble fintech since 2005, we pride ourselves on consistently pairing reliable technology with exceptional service – and having the capability to work virtually from anywhere. We built our business by hiring the brightest talent and enabling them with great tools and technology to support customers and innovate through unexpected circumstances like those we’re facing today.
Given the current situation, our focus is keeping our team members and their families safe and healthy with remote working, while continuing to provide business owners and their employees with quality service, insights and information they can depend on.
Timely Updates on Market Volatility and Long-Term Savings
We recently posted Do I Adjust My 401(k) When Markets Are Down? to offer an up-to-date perspective on long-term investing and market volatility. If you’re concerned about what to do with your retirement savings, give this a read for examples and perspectives that can help you make informed, rational choices related to your long-term investing strategy.
It may also help to look at historical trends as an input to help understand how to navigate today’s uncertain markets. Drops and volatility are unsettling for most of us, but it's important to understand that market cycles, though unique (this one especially) are normal and to be expected -- and having a long-term, well-diversified plan and sticking with it are more important than ever.
Take the S&P 500 and how it’s grown since January 2008 (pre-Great Recession) to earlier this week:
If you’d invested $1,000 at the open on the first market day of January 2008 in a low-cost S&P 500 fund, never invested again, and still hold it today, it would have grown by well over 80 percent. That’s going through the Great Recession, being in the midst of current market turmoil, and excluding dividend gains you could have received. This reinforces the value of having a well-diversified plan and staying invested through market downturns and volatility.
Continued market volatility can be expected at this time. Looking out to the future, believing in business ingenuity, the help governments will provide, and the promise of future innovations, these all bode well for stock markets to recover over time.
We hope you find this helpful. As we continue connecting with and supporting clients, we’ll post additional perspectives and answers to common questions we’re receiving on our blog and social channels.
Stay tuned, stay healthy, stay safe, and stay committed to your long-term financial plan.
Note: Markets are unpredictable and may or may not act in the future the way they have in the past. Investing over time does not assure a profit or guarantee against a loss.