Investing during troubled times

Or any other times

I often like to think about investing not as a one-time decision, but as a habit that quietly runs in the background of an entire working life. Most of us don’t start with large amounts of money. Early in a career, investing might mean setting aside a few hundred dollars each month—almost as an afterthought while managing rent, bills, and daily expenses. But what happens if that small, consistent action continues for 30 years?

Also as I reflect on my person life, my investing style have been quite unconventional in the beginning. I started early, and early on through my midlife traded almost anything that was available to trade digitally. I started in currency, then stock, options, bonds, real estate, and then mostly settled in futures. As I gotten older, my needs and desires became simpler and smaller. After my kids are born I have traded less, and only occasionally. Mostly I manage my portfolio, and most of the times I do absolutely nothing!

S&P500 yearly return for the last 30 years above.

Let me discuss the most simple investing strategy for folks in the US. It would also be applicable elsewhere. It helps if you have a job or a stable income.

I like to imagine a simple scenario: investing $500 every month into a low-cost S&P 500 index fund, starting in January 1996 and continuing steadily through December 2025. No market timing, no switching strategies, no reacting to headlines—just a fixed monthly contribution, every single month.

Over that period, the total amount invested adds up to $180,000. On its own, that number feels manageable. Spread across three decades, it is simply the result of consistency. But what might surprised you when I ran the numbers was not the contribution—it was the outcome. Here, mind you, for many $500 might seem big, and for others it might seem small, but the number invested doesn't matter, the only thing that matters in the consistency and length of time.

That $500/ month disciplined investment grows to roughly $1.15 million.

There is something almost unintuitive about that result. At no point do you invest a large lump sum or take a bold risk. Instead, most months look completely unremarkable. You contribute, markets move up or down, and life goes on. Yet somewhere along the way, the portfolio starts to take on a life of its own.

In the early years, progress feels slow. The account grows mostly because you are adding money to it. Market returns are there, but they are not very visible. It can feel as though nothing is happening. Also you might see the 2000 bear market in the plot, and the portfolio goes negative. The same happened during 2007 - 2008 financial crisis. What do you do during that time? Nothing! Just follow the same plan.

Then, gradually, something changes. The portfolio begins to respond more to market movements than to your contributions. By the final decade, growth accelerates in a way that feels disproportionate to the effort you are putting in. The market, not the investor, is doing most of the work. Looking back, what makes this approach powerful is not precision—it is simplicity.

By investing a fixed amount every month, you naturally practice dollar-cost averaging without even thinking about it. When markets fall, your $500 buys more shares. When markets rise, it buys fewer. There is no need to predict downturns or wait for the “right time.” The discipline is built directly into the process.

Perhaps more importantly, this approach quietly protects you from your own instincts. Over a 30-year period, you inevitably live through periods of uncertainty—the dot-com crash in the early 2000s, the financial crisis in 2008, the sharp COVID shock in 2020, and the inflation-driven downturn in 2022. At the time, each of these moments feels significant, even alarming. But when viewed over decades, they become small interruptions in a much larger trend.

Think about today, knowing what you know about the Iran war and this moronic administration, your intuition (mine too) might tell you to sell all and go all cash and put your savings under the mattress? Did I do that? No! Obviously not. My 401-K follows this plan. My kids 529-plan (College savings accounts) follow this plan. I simply do nothing!

What stands out most to me is how little of the final result comes from the money you put in. Out of the $1.15 million portfolio, only $180,000 was actually contributed. The rest—nearly a million dollars—comes from staying invested long enough for compounding and reinvested returns to do their work.

This is the part that is easy to overlook. Compounding is often described as powerful, but it rarely feels that way in real time. For many years, it operates quietly, almost invisibly. Only later does it become obvious. When I look at this example, I don’t see a strategy that depends on intelligence or perfect timing. I see a process that depends on persistence. The outcome is not the result of knowing when to buy or sell—it is the result of continuing to invest when it feels unnecessary, when it feels uncertain, and when it feels like nothing is happening.

In the end, this kind of investing is not exciting. It doesn’t produce dramatic stories or quick wins. But it does something far more valuable: it turns time, discipline, and ordinary contributions into something meaningful.

And that, to me, is the real takeaway.

You don’t need to be right about the market.

You just need to stay in it long enough for it to work in your favor.

If you are employed for the long time or have an stable income for a long time, this is how you create generational wealth.