Another week, another round of bear market warnings. This time it's the classic piece making the rounds again: a bear market is looming, and the smart move is to stay invested. Sounds boring. Sounds like something a financial advisor says before charging you a fee. But it's also, annoyingly, what the data keeps showing.

I've written versions of this before, and I'll keep writing it because I keep needing to hear it myself. I flagged a dot-com-style valuation signal a few weeks back and it's kept getting worse, not better. So believe me, I understand the itch to do SOMETHING. Sell half, go to cash, wait for the dust to settle, buy back cheaper. It feels responsible. It feels like adulting.

The math says otherwise. Missing just the market's best handful of days wrecks long-term returns, and those best days have a nasty habit of showing up right next to the worst ones. If you sat out during the ugly stretches, you often sat out the recovery too, because the recovery doesn't send a calendar invite. One day the market is down 3% and everyone's writing obituaries for index funds, and three weeks later it's quietly ripped 9% and you're standing there in cash like a fool at 28.

Warren and I argue about a lot of stuff, crypto especially, but on this we actually agree, and I hate that. He sent me the article with no comment, just the link, and that's his way of saying "see, even the internet knows." Rude. Correct, but rude.

So what does staying invested actually look like when you're scared? For me it looks like automation. My index fund buys happen on the 1st and the 15th whether the market is green, red, or on fire. I don't decide anything in the moment, because decisions made while your stomach hurts are usually bad ones. A bear market for a dollar-cost averager is just stocks going on sale, and I've bought plenty of things at full price I regretted more.

The one honest caveat: staying invested only works if your timeline is actually long and your emergency fund is actually real. If you need this money in two years for a house down payment, it shouldn't be fully in stocks in the first place, bear market or no bear market. And if you'd be forced to sell during a drawdown to cover rent, that's a cash problem, not a conviction problem. Fix the cash cushion first, then let the portfolio do its boring thing.

I carried $47,000 in student loans for years, so I know what it's like to watch a balance you can't control and want to rip your money out of anything that moves. But the market is the one place where doing less has historically paid more. Keep buying, keep the cushion, close the app.

That's my plan anyway. Ask me again mid-crash and I'll let you know if I actually held.