What’s the truth about the U.S. stock market? When it comes to U.S. stock index funds, you need to have the guts to buy during a bear market. The reality is, it’ll drop to a point where you don’t dare to buy anymore. All kinds of news will make you feel like this time is different, like it’s the end of the world. You’ll curse everyone who advises others to buy U.S. stocks. But it’s precisely at these moments that you need to buy. Almost all your future gains and confidence will come from the floating profits of these few moves. And the reason to dare to buy is actually very simple: because the Earth isn’t going to explode, and the game will go on. These are lessons learned through real money. It’s easy to understand when written out, but impossible to truly grasp without experiencing it yourself. The longer you stay in the capital markets, the more you’ll realize that no story or narrative in society can truly convince you. Your instincts will become razor-sharp. If you want to build wealth through the capital markets, having a stable primary job is essential. Income from outside the market will give you immense confidence to weather bear markets, especially when you’re facing floating losses. What determines your ultimate returns over decades isn’t the day-to-day trading, but a few rare tail events. Tail events decide everything. If you want to achieve long-term compounding, your primary goal shouldn’t be chasing ultra-high annual returns. Instead, it should be building an unshakable investment system that ensures you can stay in the market no matter how much it surges or crashes. As long as you’re not kicked out of the market by tail events, and as long as you can persist long enough, compounding will have the chance to work its magic. The true long-term winners aren’t the ones who catch every market trend, but those who survive wave after wave of extreme market conditions and remain in the game.