The 34% Drop in 33 Days That I Never Sold

On February 19, 2020, the S&P 500 hit an all-time high. Thirty-three days later, it was down 34%. Fastest bear market in history.

I didn't sell a share. I didn't even open the app that weekend. I bought the same amount I always buy on payday.

That wasn't courage. Courage is what you need when you have no plan. I had a plan, and the plan had already decided what I'd do before the crash showed up.

What 34% actually looks like in dollars

Do the math on a simple number. Say you had $50,000 in an S&P 500 index fund on February 19. By March 23, that's roughly $33,000. You watched $17,000 disappear in five weeks. That's about a year of take-home pay for a lot of junior soldiers, gone on a screen.

Now the part nobody talks about. If you sell at $33,000 you lock in the loss. The market then recovered to a new high by August, about five months after the bottom. The person who sold at the bottom missed the entire recovery and the people who held got their $50,000 back and then some. The only way to turn a paper loss into a permanent one is to sell.

Why I never sold: the decision was made years earlier

I read The Intelligent Investor and it changed how I think about price swings. Benjamin Graham's Mr. Market is a moody business partner who shows up every day offering to buy or sell at wildly different prices. You are not required to trade with him. Most of the time the right move is to ignore him.

So my rules were written down long before 2020. Only S&P 500 index funds. TSP C Fund, VOO, VFIAX. Never sell. Buy every payday. I held through 2018, I held through 2020, and I held through 2022. Three different crashes with three different headlines, and the same answer every time.

When the plan is simple, there's nothing to debate at 2 a.m. when the news is screaming. No judgment calls. No guessing the bottom. You just execute.

The crash is a sale, and you're a buyer

Here is the mindset shift that matters most. If you're a soldier in your twenties or thirties putting money in every month, you are a net buyer for the next 30 years. A falling market is a sale on the thing you're buying anyway.

Take $500 a month. At the February peak, that $500 bought a certain number of shares. In late March, the same $500 bought about 50% more. You don't have to be clever. You just have to keep the deposit going while everyone else freezes. Those cheap shares are doing the heavy lifting a decade from now.

Selling during a crash is like walking out of the store the day everything goes 30% off, then coming back when prices are full again.

Three rules I'd hand any battle buddy

First, decide your behavior in advance. Write one sentence: "I do not sell during a drop." Put it where you'll see it. The time to choose your reaction is while you're calm.

Second, automate the buying. Set the TSP contribution or the brokerage transfer to hit on payday so your emotions never get a vote.

Third, stop checking. A 34% drop only hurts the days you look at it. I'd rather spend those minutes on my PT score.

Boring on purpose, relentless by design

This is why my approach looks so dull from the outside. Boring on purpose, relentless by design. If you want the exact framework I follow, I laid it out on the strategy page so you can steal every piece of it.

I'm not a financial guru. I'm a battle buddy who learned the hard way that the market pays you for staying put. I came here at 20 with nothing, I came back from Hawaii at 30 with $20, and the only thing that changed the math was refusing to quit the plan when it got ugly.

The next crash is coming. I don't know the date and neither does anyone else. I do know what I'll do.

Nothing, then buy more on payday.