A Once In A Lifetime Stock Market Crash is Just Beginning

The biggest investing opportunities of your lifetime will never feel like opportunities in the moment. They're going to feel uncomfortable. They're going to feel scary. Every crash, every panic, every end of the world moment in the market ends up creating massive wealth. Not for people who try to guess the bottom, but for people who understand value before confidence comes back. And today, I want to show you how real investors think during those moments. When that next one comes, you won't freeze. You will be ready. And here's the uncomfortable truth about investing that most people don't want to hear. Everyone says they want to buy stocks cheap. Everyone says that they're waiting for the next big opportunity. Everyone says that they'll be greedy when others are fearful. But when fear actually shows up, when prices are falling without any reason whatsoever, when headlines are following the stock price and they're terrifying and portfolios are bleeding, most investors do the exact opposite. They freeze. They wait for things to calm down. They wait for the market to tell them it's safe again. And by the time it feels safe, a big chunk of that opportunity is already gone. This is why the biggest investing opportunities are always, always, always missed. Not because people don't know what to do, but because they don't understand how to think when emotions are running high. And guys, we're humans. We all have emotions. It's impossible to be a robot as long as you're using your heart, mind, and stomach. But you can still train yourself to be a little bit different. When the market is at the bottom, guess what notification it gives you? It doesn't. There's no bell at the bottom. There's no announcement that says, okay, panic's over. Now you can go buy. In fact, bottoms usually form when the news is still terrible, when the outlook still looks bad, and when people are convinced that things are going to get worse. As we move forward through this video and I explain to you the framework needed to benefit from market psychology, I want you to remember these three important questions. First off, can you separate price from value? That's the whole crux of what we're trying to do here. Price versus value. Can you stay rational when others aren't? When I say others aren't, like literally everybody is screaming, crying, and worried. And third, can you act when no one else is acting? Can you act when everybody thinks you're crazy for buying? So let me explain why fear, as uncomfortable as it feels, is actually the fuel behind the greatest investing opportunities. Imagine walking in your favorite store. The product you love, the one you've bought before, the one you want to continue buying, is suddenly 20% off. You don't assume the product's broken. You don't panic. You don't say, I'll wait until the price goes back up before I buy it. You recognize a sale for what it is, a chance to get some value for less money. Ironically, in the stock market, people flip that logic completely upside down. When prices go up, investors feel super confident. When prices go down, they feel fear. The exact same asset suddenly feels riskier, not because the business changed, but because the price did. Not because the outlook of the business changed, because the price did. That emotional mess is exactly why opportunities exist in the first place. Fear creates opportunity because markets don't fall in neat, logical ways. They fall fast. They fall emotionally. Good businesses get sold alongside bad ones. Strong balance sheets get punished along with the weak ones, and that's the disconnect. Price reflects emotion in the short term, but it reflects earnings and cash flow in the long run. This is why the best opportunities are never the ones you hear about. They don't feel like the obvious choice for most people. They would choose Microsoft at all-time highs over Meta when it fell from $320 to $88. For myself and members of our community, Meta felt obvious. You could buy shares at a single-digit price-to-earnings ratio, knowing that all the news that was saying was actually false. It's a declining business. Its revenue is falling. Its profit is falling. No, it wasn't, but most people don't think that way. They look at the price movement to determine if a company is good or bad. Now, you're going to hear this phrase a lot during market selloffs. Don't catch a falling knife. And to be fair, that warning is real in a lot of ways, and that warning exists for a reason. Buying something just because the price is dropping can be just as dangerous as buying it just because it's going up. But here's the part that most people miss. It's only a falling knife if you don't understand what you're buying and it's bad. The real risk isn't price going down. The real risk is not understanding the business, whether the price is going up, down, left, or right. If a company's revenue is still growing, if cash flow is still strong, if the balance sheet is still good and the business model makes sense, the falling price is not scary. It's an opportunity. It's the market telling you sentiment has changed, not value. That's why one of our core principles, which I'm going to explain to you later, is this simple. If you don't understand it, don't invest in it. Not because the company is bad, but because you won't have the conviction to hold or buy more when things get uncomfortable. Most people you see on YouTube, Twitter, or Reddit who warn about falling knives aren't looking at fundamentals. They're reacting to price movement headlines. Investors who focus on the business instead of the ticker don't try to catch the exact bottom. They look for moments when fear has pushed price well below value, and that distinction makes all the difference. Keep in mind, a lot of times when they buy, the price will continue going down. You are not going to buy at the exact bottom. Warren Buffett has a way of cutting through all the noise, especially during volatile markets, and his framework becomes most valuable when fear is at its highest. The first idea is simple. Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. That doesn't mean you stop investing when markets go up. It means you stop chasing. And when fear shows up, it doesn't mean you rush in blindly. It means you slow down and start looking for value. The second principle Buffett talks about is buying quality merchandise when it's marked down. Sound familiar? Like I said earlier, if something is high quality, you don't avoid it because it's on sale. You lean in. Stocks should be treated the exact same way. And the third idea might be the hardest for most people. If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes. Buffett isn't trying to predict next quarter's earnings or next month's price movement. He's buying ownership in businesses that he believes will still be relevant years down the road. Buffett consistently credits his discipline and patience over his analytical skills. Guys, Peter Lynch is one of the all-time greatest investors. He understood something most struggle with. Markets move in emotional waves, not straight lines. And those emotions follow a predictable pattern. He used what he called the cocktail party theory. When markets are down and you tell people you invest in stocks at a cocktail party, nobody wants to hear anymore. They feel bad for you. They change the subject. That's usually when fear is high and opportunity is the highest, and you should be buying. As markets recover, people slowly warm back up. Curiosity creeps in. And when you tell people you invest, they show some interest and ask you for advice. That's probably fairly neutral. The final stage is euphoria. The barber, the dentist, the waiter, the waitress, everyone has an opinion. Risk gets reframed as ignorance and skepticism is mocked. That's usually when prices are the highest and future returns are the lowest. Lynch didn't try to predict which stage came next. He focused on understanding businesses and buying them at reasonable prices. His advantage wasn't timing. It was preparation. Now, one of the biggest reasons investors miss opportunity is because they're listening to the wrong signal. The media is that lead markets. It follows the price. When stocks are going up, the narrative is positive and awesome. Analysts race price targets, and when profit prices fall, the story flips just as quickly. Look at a company like Adobe. We just looked at it recently. An analyst has downgraded them today, and they have fallen. Their all-time high was four years ago at 700 bucks. They're now at almost $300. Guys, every quarter, they have record revenue. Every quarter, their free cash flow goes up. Every quarter, their profit goes up. An analyst has downgraded them. Why? Because the price is down. That's my perception of it. Now, suddenly, these companies are broken, uninvestable, or facing major threats. World of Adobe, everybody thinks AIs are a major threat, yet in the last two years of this AI boom, their revenue keeps going up. Oftentimes, nothing fundamental has changed. The perception has, and this is why relying on headlines is so freaking dangerous. News is designed to explain what just happened, not what's going to happen over the next three, five, 10, 20 years. We have seen this time and time again. Let's look at Alibaba, for example. This is a company that we've discussed a lot over the past few years. Prior to 2020, it was over $300 per share. All the news was that China was going to dominate the world. Then it fell to $58 a share, and that entire time, the narrative became China's uninvestable, and all the reasons given were the same reasons that existed at $300 per share. But now the stock was down, those reasons came into the forefront of this is a problem. Now it's been as high as $180, $190, and Alibaba is one of the AI leaders of the world poised for major growth. Disciplined investors learn to separate narrative from numbers. They don't ask, what's the media saying today? They ask, what is this business worth, and how can I take advantage of other investors' emotions? This is one of the most important lessons investors ever learn, and it's where most people go wrong. A great company is not automatically a great investment. There's a company, and there's a stock. They're different things. Companies don't become good or bad overnight. That's what also makes it hard. Their stock price, relative to value, actually can change overnight, though. This is why once disciplined investors understand what a company does, they shift more focus on what they're paying for it. There's this common misconception that growth investing is about finding strong companies that have high growth, and that value investing is about distressed companies trading cheap without much growth. Completely wrong. All investing is value investing once you understand it. In fact, our stock analyzer tool, the very tool I use before I start any research, what is the very first line of inputs? Revenue growth. I don't want to buy a company that's declining unless I can get it super cheap. I want to buy good companies that are going to compound. You can still invest in that. Now, economist Hyman Minsky had a simple but powerful insight. Long periods of stability actually create the conditions for instability. When markets go up for years, investors start to believe risk has disappeared. Volatility feels low. Losses feel temporary, and slowly behavior starts to change. People take on more risk. They take on more leverage, not because they're reckless, but because the environment rewards it. That's called the Minsky moment. It doesn't happen all at once. It builds quietly, kind of like the frog in the boiling pot. Stability leads to confidence, confidence leads to risk-taking, and eventually something, anything, exposes how fragile a system has become. The trigger doesn't matter, guys. The conditions matter. This is why crashes always feel like they came out of nowhere. The spark is so obvious in hindsight, but the gasoline was already everywhere. We just ignored it. Too much belief that this time is different. Guys, I know exactly how it feels to be paralyzed by fear in the stock market. You're probably thinking, I know I should invest, but what if I buy the wrong stock? What if I lose everything? I had those exact same fears 25 years ago. I made massive mistakes. I followed hype, I followed tips, and I lost money. Critically, every mistake taught me a valuable lesson about investing. That's exactly why I decided to build everything money, to take that knowledge and turn it into the tools I needed to make better investing decisions. Now, I want to share that knowledge and those tools with you and build the community that I wish I had back then. Join our community, and you'll learn how to see a company's value, how to make smart choices, and most importantly, how to sleep at night knowing that you aren't gambling anymore. You're now an investor, so start your seven-day trial today. Let's take the fear out of investing together. Now, here's something I need you guys to understand. Markets are always going to move in cycles. They always have, they always will. In fact, Benjamin Franklin's quote about death and taxes, I've expanded it, and I've said there are three guarantees in life, death, taxes, and cycles. We go through bull markets where prices rise and risk feels low. We go through corrections where markets pull back 10 to 20% and they test investor confidence. We also go through bear markets where pessimism takes over and prices fall much further. And occasionally, we go through recessions and crashes where fear dominates and selling explodes. What's important to understand is that these cycles aren't failures of capitalism. They're features of it. They force discipline back into the system. They punish excess leverage, weak balance sheets, and unrealistic expectations. And they reward businesses that can survive when conditions tighten. Every cycle feels unique while you're living through it. The headlines change. The narratives evolve. The technology looks different. But underneath it all, the structure is the same. I tell everybody the story is the same. The characters have changed. Investors who understand this stop being surprised by volatility. They don't panic when markets fall and they don't get euphoric when markets rise. Because the goal isn't to avoid downturns. The goal is to be positioned correctly when they inevitably arrive. So when markets finally turn, whether it's a correction, a bear market, or a full-blown crash, most of what investors think matters doesn't. Short-term forecasts stop working. Narratives fall apart. Analysts' confidence disappears. And price momentum, which felt so reliable on the way up, becomes meaningless on the way down. What starts to matter instead are a few simple foundational things. First, cash flow. Companies that generate real consistent cash can survive downturns. They can pay their bills, they can invest, they can buy back shares, and they can outlast weaker competitors. Second, balance sheets. When money's cheap, debt feels harmless. When conditions tighten, debt becomes a weight. Businesses with manageable leverage and flexibility don't need to panic. Businesses stretched too thin lose control fast. Third, durability of demand. In downturns, people stop buying what they want and focus on what they need. The companies that sell essential products or deeply embedded services keep operating. Fragile business models don't. And finally, and most importantly, valuation. Even the best company will become a bad investment if you overpay. When cycles turn, valuation compression does the damage. Expectations reset, multiples fall, prices reconnect with reality. This is why downturns feel unfair. Great companies fall alongside bad ones. That's also why opportunity exists. When fear takes over, the market stops rewarding stories and starts repricing fundamentals. Investors who understand this aren't trying to predict how bad things will get. They're asking a much better question. Is this business strong enough to Guys, on a separate note, I have our five key tenets of principle-driven investing posted in my office to read every day. These are the guardrails that keep me from making costly mistakes. Bill Ackman, he does his own same thing with his own investment pillars. That's because it's so important to repeat the basics time and again. You need to remember the core principles that should drive your decisions. So guys, if you want to see what those five tenets are of principle-driven investing, click the link below, download it, keep it at your side, keep it in your phone, keep it on your home computer. That way, when you're starting to feel emotional, you can read these and bring yourself back to reality. How do you prepare? Well, preparation isn't about predicting. It's not about predicting when the next downturn will happen. It's about deciding what you're going to do before emotions start to get out of control. That's where we're here to help. The first part is simple. Stay invested. You don't wait for unless you're like me, who has a ton of other investments going on out there, and your net worth is going to go up consistently because you have real estate businesses and stocks. And I'm not saying it to be cocky. I'm saying it to say my situation is different than yours. Also, you consistently invest through dollar cost averaging, so you're always participating in the market. Guys, I do that. I do it every first of the month. I buy shares of SCHD, and at some point in the future, I'm going to add QQQ and probably VOO to that. The second part is knowing what you want to own. When markets are calm, you build a watch list. You study businesses. You understand how they make money, where the risks are, and what a responsible and reasonable valuation looks like. That way, when prices fall, you're not scrambling. You're executing a plan you already made. Charlie Munger always said, opportunity comes to the prepared mind. The third part is being willing to act incrementally. Don't go all in. You don't try to be perfect. You add as prices fall below value, understanding they will probably fall further. Preparation means being comfortable with perfection because waiting for certainty guarantees you're going to miss opportunities. And finally, preparation requires emotional distance. You don't anchor onto your bank account. You don't let daily price moves decide whether you're right or wrong. You focus on ownership, not tickers. Businesses don't change overnight. Prices do. Guys, for those of you who are newer, you may not have seen previous videos where I literally show that I cover up the dollar amounts when I go into my accounts. I avoid going to my accounts because the markets are up a ton. I don't want to get myself attached to a really high number and go, yes, I'm so smart. That'll make me make bad decisions. This is how disciplined investors turn fear into fuel. Not with bold predictions, not with heroic timing, but with clarity, patience, and a plan that's already in place before fear ever arrives. So here's the truth behind the title of this video. The investing opportunity of a lifetime doesn't show up with other investors being excited. It shows up wrapped in fear, uncertainty, doubt. Morgan Housel says every past crash looks like an opportunity. Every future one looks like a risk. I show a chart of the S&P and say, where would you want to invest here if you could only invest five times? And everybody picks the bottom of those times. And guess what? Those were all crashes. And that was when pessimism was the highest. They wait for the market to feel safe, and they miss out on stuff. Guys, by the time you wait for safety, prices have already gained significantly, even from the bottoms. Real investors don't pretend that they know what comes next, but they prepare. They understand what they own. They know what a business is worth. And when fear creates a disconnect between price and value, they act, and they act calmly. Cycles will always exist. Fear will always return. And markets will always test your behavior before they reward your patience. If you stay disciplined, if you stay patient and grounded in fundamentals, the market will eventually do the heavy lifting for you. Now, guys, we recently released a video explaining the exact three ETFs that I would dollar cost average into today if I was brand new to investing. So if you want to see how the strategy would still allow me to retire a multimillionaire, check out the video right here. Thank you for your time.