Beating the Market

Beating the Market

This is the chart of Facebook (now known as META) going back to its Initial Public Offering (IPO) back in 2014. If you had invested $10,000 in the stock then, at the peak you would have had about $100,000 but since then that has shrunk to an amount less than if you had just simply invested in the S&P 500. The stock market since then, which was May of 2012, is now 250% higher. Facebook (or Meta) is now 156% higher since then.

Yes, there was a point in time when you could have been outperforming the market significantly. The question then becomes would you have sold at the top? Would you have held the stock from the start to the top, or would you have piled in at the top and rode the stock down 90% from the high?

Beating the market is hard. Picking individual stocks is hard. Have a process and stick to it.