How to Prepare for a Stock Market Crash in 4 Simple Steps

Smart investors always have a plan to prepare for a stock market crash. In fact, stock market crashes only devastating because most investors are rarely prepared for a major pullback.
Plus, the timing of stock market crashes is impossible to predict with certainty…
The stock market crash of 1929 wiped out 86% of the value of the Dow in just three years. But before the crash, the Dow had gained over 300% during the 1920s and economists were predicting that stocks could only rise. Famed economist Irving Fisher claimed stocks had reached a ‘permanently high plateau’ in 1929, just over a month before the crash.
Investors were similarly caught off guard in 2000 and 2008. The dot-com bubble popped in 2000, leading to a 14% drop in the Dow in just over a month and a 36% decrease before it began recovering. The Dow lost half its value during the 2008 stock market crash.

This post was published at Wall Street Examiner on August 2, 2017.