Markets also go up and down based on economic news. Sometimes stock markets go down in ways that make sense—big layoffs, for example. But sometimes it can seem like headlines are completely out of sync with what the markets are doing.
Stock markets aren’t the only numbers that financial experts pay attention to—or that matter to you and the health of the economy. Some of those numbers, such as unemployment, may be ones that you’re familiar with. Others, you may never have heard of.
Those are just two data points over the long, varied history of the stock market. In general, stock markets go up for longer periods of time and with stronger growth compared to times when stock markets go down.
Down and Up Market
Investors are shrugging off the last minute deal Congress reached over the weekend to avert a government shutdown.
The labor market will be a hot topic with three barometers of its strength coming this week. Market watchers will be looking for any signs about the health of the wider economy and factors that may affect the Federal Reserve's path forward on interest rates.
Confidence in the stability of future investments plays a significant role in whether markets go up or down. Investors are more likely to purchase stocks if they are convinced their shares will increase in value in the future. If, however, there is a reason to believe that shares will perform poorly, there will be more investors looking to sell than to buy.
I would say that absolutely, yes. You want to keep investing. And the reason why you want to keep investing is because, like I mentioned earlier, you're able to take advantage of the lower-cost value stocks in the market. And the good thing about investing continuously over time is you're able to take advantage of something called dollar-cost averaging, which is basically, you're buying investments - maybe every week, every two weeks, every month - regardless of if the market is high, low, lower, lowest. So when you average it out, you're still in a really good position. Most people don't have a lump sum of tens of thousands of dollars just sitting around, right? Whereas with dollar-cost averaging, you can invest small amounts of money when you have it, as you have it, consistently over time and build up to whatever that lump sum would be over time.
