The 9-Out-of-10 Rule I’ve Followed for 40+ Years

by Geof Smith | Sep 2, 2026

🚨 Profit Panel is live at 9:30 a.m. ET🚨
[tap to join us for Profit Panel]

Markets are noisy.

You get down weeks. You get down months. And every few years, you get a stretch that makes you wonder if this is the time it all falls apart.

But here’s something I keep coming back to — something that’s held true through every cycle I’ve traded: Nine times out of 10, the market goes up.

That doesn’t mean every day is a winner. It doesn’t mean bear markets don’t happen. But those downturns are relatively brief compared with the long expansions that tend to follow.

Think about the financial crisis. The market started selling off near the end of 2007, continued falling through 2008 and finally turned higher in March 2009.

The decline was painful, but it eventually gave way to a historic bull market.

That’s the pattern worth remembering: Fear can dominate for months, while disciplined investors may benefit from the recovery for years.

The Math That Matters

Bear markets are real. They hurt. But they don’t tend to last nearly as long as the growth cycles that follow them.

If you can wade through those difficult periods, you’re giving compounding time to work. The question isn’t whether there will be pullbacks — there will be.

The question is whether you have the patience and discipline to avoid making an emotional decision at the worst possible moment.

Here’s a clean example: If you put $100 into Apple (AAPL) back in 2000 and held on, that modest investment would have grown dramatically despite multiple crashes, corrections and stretches of intense volatility.

That’s not a hot tip or a promise that every stock will perform the same way. It’s an illustration of what can happen when you own a strong business, give the investment time and don’t panic at the first wobble.

Why the Big Bias Is to Buy

Markets have a tendency to go up rather than down over the long run. That creates both a structural and psychological advantage for patient buyers: Businesses grow, earnings compound and innovation creates value even as short-term fear pushes prices around.

That’s why the big bias is to buy the market.

I’m not saying go all-in blind. I’m saying respect the historical pattern. Build positions you’re comfortable owning through a rough stretch.

Use cash-secured puts to get paid while you wait for entries. Layer in covered calls once you’re long.

The goal isn’t to time every top and bottom — it’s to stay patient and positioned so that when the next major decline ends, you’re not on the sidelines watching another long rally leave without you.

Geof Smith
Geof Smith Trading

Follow along and join the conversation for real-time analysis, trade ideas, market insights and more!