Unused to volatility, young investors may dread a downturn. Here's how to prepare
BNN Bloomberg
While experts agree that no one can predict an impending market crash, there are some strategies that young people — who may not have experienced a crash before — can use to make sure they’re in a good position if a crash were to occur.
Between rising inflation and geopolitical events, there’s been uncertainty in the future of the markets.
“It’s one of these times where you just feel like anything could happen ... A lot of people have some anxiety about what’s to come in the short term or the near term,” said Robb Engen, a fee-only financial planner at Boomer and Echo in Lethbridge, AB.
“It really is a different time than let’s say the March 2020 crash, which was almost over in an instant before things started roaring back again,” he said.
While experts agree that no one can predict an impending market crash, there are some strategies that young people — who may not have experienced a crash before — can use to make sure they’re in a good position if a crash were to occur.
Investors who have been in the market for a while have been through the 2015 oil crash, the 2008 financial crisis, possibly even further back to the tech bubble collapse in 2000 and have experienced market crashes before, said Andrew Dobson, financial planner at Objective Financial Partners Inc. in Toronto.
If those people learned to stay in their investments at those points in time, another downturn isn’t going to affect their behaviour and they'll stick with it. “They’ve built an immunity,” Dobson said.
