What the last six years have taught us about long-term investment
In this article, we look at the major market shocks investors have lived through since 2020, how markets performed despite that uncertainty, and why a long-term investment plan can help you stay focused when headlines feel unsettling.
Why long-term investing is not just about theory
Yes, the technical side matters. It helps to understand inflation, interest rates, diversification, tax rules and what different investments are actually designed to do. But that is only one part of becoming a confident long-term investor.
The other part is learning how you respond when the world feels uncertain. When the headlines are frightening. When markets fall. When everyone seems to have an opinion. When doing something feels urgent, but doing nothing feels uncomfortable too.
That part is not usually learned from a textbook. It is learned by living through real events and noticing what they teach you.
And the last six years have taught investors a lot.
What investors have lived through since 2020
It is now six and a bit years since the start of 2020.
In that time, investors have been through a remarkable amount. Markets may feel relatively calm at the moment, although we have recently come through the US-Iran disruption, which may not be fully resolved. So this feels like a useful moment to pause, look back, and ask: what have we actually lived through? And what can those experiences teach us?
We often think of major market events as rare. Something happens, markets react, and then we return to quieter conditions for a while.
The last few years have not felt like that. We cannot know whether the next six years will look anything like the last six. But what we have already experienced is worth looking at properly.
Major market shocks from 2020 to 2026
In March 2020, the Covid pandemic shut down much of the global economy. Markets fell sharply, dropping 34% in just 32 days.
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Over the months that followed, global inflation reached 40-year highs, interest rates began rising, and markets entered bear-market territory in June.
In September 2022, Liz Truss’s UK mini-budget triggered a crisis in the gilt market.
In March 2023, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and Credit Suisse all collapsed within weeks of each other, prompting fears of another 2008-style banking crisis.
In October 2023, the Hamas-Israel war began.
In August 2024, the yen carry trade unwound. Japan’s Nikkei index had its worst day since 1987, and global markets followed.
In January 2025, Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek triggered a global technology sell-off. NVIDIA lost $589 billion in a single day.
In April 2025, Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs triggered a 12% fall in the S&P 500 over seven days.
And in March 2026, the US-Iran conflict closed the Strait of Hormuz, with markets falling around 10% from recent highs.
That is a lot for any investor to absorb.
Any one of those events would have felt significant on its own. Together, they tell us something important about investing.
There is always a reason to feel nervous.
That does not mean those concerns are silly. They are not. These events were serious. It is completely normal to worry when the world feels unstable.
But long-term investment asks us to hold two truths at once: the world can feel deeply uncertain in the short term, and markets can still reward patience over the long term.
How markets performed despite global uncertainty
At the end of 2019, before any of this began, the S&P 500 closed at around 3,231.
By the end of April 2026, it stood at 7,209, having recently passed 7,000 for the first time.
That is a gain of 123% over six years.
The earnings picture is also worth noticing.
In 2019, the companies that make up the S&P 500 collectively earned around $139 per share. By 2025, they were earning around $253 per share.
In plain English, the businesses you own through a diversified investment portfolio were earning substantially more than they had six years earlier, despite everything that happened along the way.
This is an important point.
When you invest, you are not just buying a line on a chart. You are usually buying into real businesses. Businesses that sell products, employ people, adapt, innovate, cut costs, raise prices, make mistakes, recover, and continue trying to grow.
Markets can be noisy. Share prices can move quickly. Headlines can feel overwhelming.
But over time, investment returns are not only driven by the noise. They are also driven by the ability of real companies to keep earning, adapting and growing.
That does not mean markets always go up. They do not. It does not mean every company succeeds. They do not. And it certainly does not mean investing is risk-free.
But it does remind us why staying invested through difficult periods can matter.
Why market falls feel so uncomfortable at the time
It is easy to look back now and make it sound obvious.
It was not obvious at the time.
During the pandemic, nobody knew how long lockdowns would last or what the economic damage would be.
When inflation rose, many people worried that higher prices and higher interest rates would permanently weaken markets.
When banks started failing in 2023, it was understandable that people thought of 2008.
When wars and geopolitical shocks filled the news, it was completely natural to wonder what that meant for your pension, ISA or investment portfolio.
None of those worries were irrational. Being concerned about the world is a normal human response. Being concerned about your money when the world feels uncertain is also normal.
But hindsight gives us a perspective we never have in the moment. It shows us that how something feels at the time and what it means over the long term are not always the same thing.
A market fall can feel terrifying while it is happening. But for a long-term investor, the bigger risk is not always the fall itself. Sometimes, the bigger risk is making a rushed decision during the fall and missing the recovery that follows.
That is not easy to sit with. I know that.
This is why a proper plan matters. Not because it removes uncertainty. It cannot. But because it gives you something steadier to come back to when uncertainty arrives.
The risk of reacting to every market headline
Staying informed matters.
You do not need to ignore the news. You do not need to pretend serious events are not serious. And you do not need to become detached from what is happening in the world.
But there is a difference between being informed and being pulled off course.
Why a long-term investment plan matters
This is where a clear financial plan can help you stay focused on your goals, rather than being pulled around by every market headline.
The headlines will always be loudest when emotions are running high. Markets will always give you moments when doing something feels more comfortable than doing nothing. There will always be someone predicting disaster, and often they will sound very convincing.
The question is not whether you ever feel worried. Of course you will. The question is whether your investment decisions are being led by your long-term plan, or by the emotion of the latest event.
If you have remained invested through the past six years, in line with your long-term plan, you have already lived through a powerful lesson.
You have seen that market shocks are uncomfortable. You have seen that uncertainty is part of investing. You have seen that there is rarely a perfect moment when everything feels calm, clear and risk-free.
And you have also seen that patience can be rewarded.
That experience matters. It gives you a reference point for the future. Because the next difficult period will probably not look exactly like the last one. It may come from a different country, a different sector, a different political decision, a different crisis or a risk nobody is talking about yet.
But the emotional pattern may feel familiar.
Concern. Noise. Falling markets. Pressure to react. The temptation to abandon the plan.
That is when the real work of long-term investing happens.
The art of staying invested through uncertainty
The science of investing is important. Understanding risk, diversification, tax, asset allocation and time horizon all matter.
But the art of investing is different. It is learning how to stay steady when markets are not, and understanding that uncertainty is not an exception to investing. It is part of the deal.
It is knowing that a good investment plan should not rely on the world being calm all the time.
And it is recognising that confidence does not come from predicting the next crisis correctly. It comes from having a plan that is built to withstand the fact that crises will happen.
That is not about being reckless. It is not about ignoring risk. It is not about pretending every investor should feel comfortable with the same approach.
Different people have different goals, different timeframes, different responsibilities and different attitudes to risk.
But if you are investing for the long term, the last six years are a useful reminder.
There will always be reasons to worry.
There will always be events that make markets wobble.
There will always be moments when the comfortable option is to step away and wait until things feel clearer.
But clarity often only arrives afterwards.
Final thoughts: focus on what you can control
The job of a long-term investor is not to know exactly what happens next. It is to build a plan that gives you the best chance of staying invested through the uncertainty, in a way that is appropriate for you.
That is how you learn the art of investing.
Not from a textbook.
From experience.
And, ideally, from not having to learn every lesson the hard way.
Important information
The value of investments and any income from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back the full amount invested. Past performance should be used as a guide only and is not a guarantee of future performance.
Different investors will view these trade-offs differently depending on their objectives, time horizon and attitude to risk. If you would like to discuss how this relates to your own circumstances, please speak to us.