2025: The Best Year (In History) To Be A Stock Market Investor

2025 is shaping up to be the best year in history to be a stock market investor, but probably not because of what you think. It's not because of the potential returns you can see on your money in 2025, although some people have become incredibly rich. It's because we've gotten three decades of stock market education in just the last three months. I'll show you what I mean. On February 3rd, 2025, President Trump first announced tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico, which triggered a global stock market selloff because traders and investors got scared of what might be coming. And then one day later, President Trump paused those same tariffs and the markets rebounded. The people that sold out of panic and fear lost money. The people that bought the dip got rich. One month later, on March 4th, President Trump reinstated those same tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico. And again, we saw a global stock market selloff. Stock markets lost $4 trillion of value in just a matter of days. And then, March 7th, just a few days later, tariffs were paused again. And then, of course, the stock market rebounded and the people that sold out of fear lost money. The people that bought the dip got rich. Then, on April 2nd, Liberation Day, President Trump announced tariffs on the entire world. And now, the global stock market crashed again. This time, we saw the stock market fall at the fastest rate that we have seen since COVID. Then, one week later, on April 9th, President Trump paused those tariffs again for 90 days to discuss the tariffs. And like the previous two months, the people that sold during the crashes lost money. The people that bought the dip got rich. I don't say this so you become a day trader. I don't say this so you try to predict what's going to happen next. I say this to help you understand how the psychology of investing works because we have just received three decades of education in three months. Let me show you what I mean. We are averaging a little bit over one recession per decade. We have seen 16 recessions over the last 100 years. Every time we see a recession, we see markets go down. And when markets go down, we hear the same news. This time is different. You need to get out while you still can. You need to sell. You need to panic. It's a very common thing to see blood on the streets for people to panic, for people to sell, and for people to lose money. But what happens during each one of those downturns is the people that go against the grain, who believe in the long-term vision of the economy, who don't get caught up into the day-to-day of what might be happening in the next few weeks, next few months, or even the next few years, who can then come in and buy when people are panicking, have the ability to buy good investments at a discounted price. Now, I don't know what's going to happen next week or next month. I don't know if we're going to enter a recession next week, next month, or next year. But what I do know is if we take a look at history, we know that markets go up and markets go down. And the people that have come in and bought good investments at a discounted price have been proven to build wealth over the long term. How do we know? Let's take a look at 2022. In 2022, the stock market fell by around 20%. The people that came in and bought were able to see their investments rise in the coming years. In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, we saw the fastest sell-off in the stock market since the Great Depression. In fact, it exceeded the Great Depression rate. And people that came in that bought stocks during that 40% sell-off were able to see huge returns at record speeds. Let's go back to 2008 when the Great Financial Crisis happened. The people that came in and bought stocks during that crash were able to see their wealth grow after a few years of rebounding. It didn't rebound in 2008 like it did in 2020. But after a few years of downturn, markets went back up. Same thing in the housing market. In the housing market, we saw house prices fall from 2008 to 2009 to 2010 to 2011 until 2012. After 2012, housing prices hit a bottom until they finally started going back up. We can go back to 2000 when the dot-com bubble bursted. When the dot-com bubble bursted in 2000, people thought that the internet was a fad. Nobody's going to use technology like that ever again. And that this whole tech space is going to disappear and vanish. Well, the financially savvy that went against the grain were able to buy great investments like Amazon at a 90% discount because they were doing what most people were not doing. I call this channel the Minority Mindset because it's all about thinking differently than the majority of people. Again, we don't know if a recession is coming tomorrow. We don't know if a market crash is coming tomorrow. But what we do know is when downturns happen, they create opportunities for investors that are thinking about the long term. Now, these are things we've been covering all in Market Briefs. Again, Market Briefs is my free financial newsletter where every day, my team is working to break down what's happening in things like the economy, the stock market, the housing market, crypto, and the global economy. And when you join Market Briefs, not only do you get the free newsletter, but you're also going to get my investing masterclass free as a bonus just for signing up for Market Briefs, my free newsletter. So if you want to get the free financial newsletter and my investing masterclass, all you have to do is click the link down in the description below. But the reason why I say 2025 has been such a great year for investors is because we just got three snippets of data showing the same thing again and again and again. Normally, you have to wait a long time to see these types of downturns and recoveries. We saw it happen three times in 2025 alone. And I say this to make a point because the success that you see as an investor has part to do with their financial education, but it's also due to your financial psychology. If you cannot control your emotions as an investor, you're never going to be able to build wealth. I know we're going to see a recession. I know we're going to see a market crash. When? I don't know. Everybody has an opinion. Financial opinions are like armpits. Everybody's got a couple and some stink more than others. I have no idea. I'm not in the business of trying to predict when we're going to see a recession. I'm not in the business of trying to predict when we're going to see a market crash. I'm in the business of buying when that thing happens. Because we know through history that if you can come in and buy during those opportunities, it can create the opportunity for you to build wealth at a much faster rate because you can come in and buy good investments at a discounted price, period. Now, normally, we don't see this many crazy market swings in one year, let alone a decade, but we saw them in just a few months. I say this because you have to understand this because we're going to continue to see more volatility. We're going to continue to see more volatility with tariffs. We're going to continue to see more volatility with political things going on. We're going to see more volatility with the economy. We know all these things are happening, but if you want to be able to find the opportunity, this is where you have to be able to now understand how to navigate the craziness. This starts with number one, cutting through the emotion, cutting through the noise. This is why I'm such an advocate for market briefs is because all of our financial news is in that one email, so we don't have to give you the sensationalism. Most of the traditional financial media wants to sell you fear or greed because it gets you excited. That's what gets you to click. That's how they get paid. I want you to understand what's actually happening that way to cut through the noise. Then you cannot spend all of your money because you can see the greatest and best investment opportunity in the world tomorrow. But if you have no money to actually invest, it doesn't do you any good. So you can't spend all your money. You have to have money to invest that we can actually capitalize on investment opportunities. Then you have to be able to identify investments. And the way you do that is going to be based off of what your investing strategy is. You don't have to try to find the next Amazon, the next NVIDIA, the next Apple, the next McDonald's. You can just invest in the American economy because there are funds out there that will give you exposure to the American economy. Now, I can't tell you what to invest, and I'll give you a couple of examples, but you've got to remember that investing has risks. You're never guaranteed to make money when you invest. In fact, you will lose money at some point. So make sure you always do your own due diligence and never blindly trust a random guy on YouTube. There are funds out there like VTI. This is an ETF that gives you exposure to the total stock market. So if you said, I just want to invest in the stock market, VTI will give you exposure to the total stock market. But if you wanted to get a little more granular, there are funds that give you exposure to the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is a group of the 500 largest companies in the American stock market. So now, instead of trying to find the total stock market, you can just invest in the American economy through the S&P 500. Now, you're investing in the top 500 companies. For example, right now, McDonald's is in the S&P 500. And if McDonald's starts to serve some nasty burgers, and they start to go under a lot of lawsuits, and they go into bankruptcy, they're going to be kicked out of the S&P 500. So those funds would kick McDonald's out and replace McDonald's with another company. What are some ETFs that give you exposure to the S&P 500? Here are two examples, SPY and VOO. As a disclaimer, I personally have some of my own money in VOO. These are funds that give you exposure to the S&P 500. And when you invest in these broad economic funds, you don't have to worry about trying to find the next Amazon, the next Tesla, the next NVIDIA. You're just owning a piece of the American economy, and you want to own it for the long term. That is the key. You got to own it for the long term, because we don't know how long the next recession is going to last. We've been kind of very fortunate over the last few years that every downturn saw a fast recovery. In 2025, a downturn saw a quick recovery. It was those V-shaped recoveries where things went down and then popped off very quickly. It's not normally like that. Even if we go back to 2020, we went from the fastest stock market sell-off in the history of time to the fastest stock market rally in the history of time. Both of those things happened in the same year. That's not normal. Normally it takes more time, months if not years. And that's why I keep saying we're so blessed in 2025 to have this knowledge, because I want you to learn this. If you have time on your side, you can start to take advantage of this education for whatever is going to be coming next, because we know that long-term investors are the ones that build wealth. It's not traders. Long-term investors are investing for years, if not decades. We know that long-term investors are the ones that make the most money. Traders can make a lot of money very quickly, but they can lose all that money and then some just as fast. Long-term investors are the ones that are really building the long-term wealth, but you want to be able to capitalize on opportunities. It's not about timing the market. It's about taking advantage of opportunities that might come your way. And this is where you have to know your strategy. You got to know the game. There's a lot of emotion out there, and now the internet has amplified things, because when people start to panic, you start to post about it in every community on the internet, and now you start to read forums of people talking about how they're selling, how they would never touch the stock market in this volatility, how whatever is happening, the president is destroying the economy. You want to be able to cut through the noise and not get caught up in the emotion. And this is one of the most important factors, because we know that if you invest your money for long enough, you will be able to build wealth. The longer you invest your money for, the less your risk is, assuming you have a good investment. But if you can come in and buy at a discounted price, that gives you the ability to buy more assets for the same amount of dollars. If you can see a 10% discount, you're getting a discount on how much you have to pay to buy those assets, which means you can grow your wealth even faster. And this is one of those things where you got to just be able to cut through the noise and find the opportunity for you. That's why I say the way you win as a passive investor, if you're investing in the total stock market or the S&P 500, is through following a strategy like A, B, B. Always be buying. Set up a system so every week, or every two weeks, or every month, you keep it reoccurring and make sure it's passive and automatic, that every week, or every two weeks, or every month, money is pulled out of a check-ins account automatically, and then it's automatically invested into your funds, into your portfolio of whatever it is that you want to invest in. And then you don't touch it. You don't touch it if there's tariffs happening. You don't touch it if there's an election happening. You don't touch it if there's a recession happening. You don't touch it if markets are crashing. In fact, the only time you might touch it is when markets are going down, you contribute more money. And now, if you stick with it like this, you will be able to build wealth. And we just saw that over the last three months, because we saw the downs and the ups. We saw the panics of people saying, never touch the stock market. Then we saw markets rebound. Then we saw people saying, oh, the market is great. And buy high, sell low. This is why so many people stay broke when they try to start investing their money, because they try to time the market. The way you win is just by being a long-term investor and then finding the opportunities and sticking with them. Again, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. We will see another recession. We will see another market crash. I don't know when. But what I do know is I'm going to be buying. And I want you to understand the game and the psychology. Normally, it doesn't happen this fast, where things rebound in a matter of days, or weeks, or even hours. Normally, it takes years. That's what we've seen in history. But if you understand this, now, you could be a long-term investor of the American economy. Or if you want to be more sophisticated, you can find specific companies, or stocks, or other assets that you want to buy. But the key is to stick with it, not get caught up in the emotion. Be a long-term investor. And if you find a discount on a good investment, that gives you the opportunity to buy more. When Amazon has a discount, when McDonald's has a discount, when Macy's has a discount, everybody's lining up with their credit card in hand. When the stock market has a discount, now people get concerned if this is something that you really want to buy. Identify what you want to buy. Find your good investments. If you see a sale, if you see markets crash, use it as an opportunity to buy. We know that recessions happen. We know that a recession is coming. We know that a market crash is coming. We just don't know when. History doesn't exactly repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And when you understand that, well, now you can be a long-term investor and find the opportunities for you. That way, you can build more wealth for yourself, for your family, and your community, and take better care of your own financial health. And with that, I will see you on YouTube tomorrow.