Is the market to volatile to invest now?

 Last year, in response to concerns I was hearing in finance groups about the market prices being so high, I wrote this entry:

Is the market too high to invest now?

It's one of the more visited ones here. I showed a graph of the S&P 500 over the last 100 years to show that even if the market is at an all time high, the prices have always eventually increased and the long-term investors made money. 

Were you worried about the high prices? Then welcome to 2025! I hate to say that, because there are consequences from economic slowdowns, but at least the S&P 500 funds are lower than they were a few months ago. You'd think people would feel good about investing, it's like they have a chance to go back in time and get their shares at a price they missed out on in October, right? 

But no, I saw a comment telling a new investor to sit out for a bit because now the market is "too volatile".

I KNOW.

Once again, let's zoom out to understand what happens to people who invest in volatile markets. Here is the last 100 years of the S&P 500, on a logarithmic scale so we can visualize it, and here are all the places where it was at a 3 month low.

It's the same story. If I bought $100 worth of shares one year ago, those same shares are worth $113. I am okay. It's not perfect. If I'd been paying attention, I would have seem my shares hit $117 last October. 

But let's go back even further. Let's say I invested in August 2019, or May 2020 - if I'd done that, my shares would be worth TWICE what they were today. The market has really doubled in five years. That's not normal, but it's amazing, and when will we get back to that price again? The 2020 investors were definitely in the middle of a volatile market. Then 2019 investors saw their shares go up, and then down - but then back up. What they all have in common was they have had time in the market that we have not. 

So I am going to conclude this entry the exact same way I concluded the last one:

People are constantly trying to predict the next crash but it's really not relevant, and they're usually not correct. The market goes down, then back up. As you can see from the chart, it has recovered every time for the last 100 years. So who are you now, looking at an all time high? The 1995 investor? The 2007 one? They both made money! The only one who didn't was the one who skipped out and didn't invest at all.