May 2026 Newsletter
- bespoke62
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
A Tale of the 2020s
Investing is both a science and an art.
The science of investing can be learned in books, the classroom, and by following your curiosity online. Understanding inflation, interest rates, asset allocation, and legislation gives you the foundation for becoming a successful investor.
But it’s the art of investing that will ultimately determine your success. And the art of investing cannot be learned in a textbook. It gets taught to us by the events we live through. The events we see coming, and the events that blindside us. But only if we learn from them.
From time to time, it benefits us to reflect on history so that we can be more prepared for the future.
Six Years in Events
It’s now been six and a bit years since the start of 2020. In that time, investors have been through a lot. With markets currently calm, but having recently come through the US-Iran chaos that isn’t quite finished, this is a good moment to look back at what we’ve actually faced, and what those experiences can teach us.
We tend to think of major market events as something that happens every few years, with mostly quiet stretches in between. The recent past has been busier. We can’t predict whether the next six years will look the same, but what we’ve lived through over the past six years is worth a deliberate look.
1. March 2020. The Covid pandemic shuts down the global economy. Markets fall 34% in 32 days.
2. February to October 2022. Russia invades Ukraine in February. Global inflation hits 40-year highs, the rate hike cycle begins, and markets enter a bear market in June.
3. September 2022. Liz Truss’s UK mini-budget triggers a gilt market crisis.
4. March 2023. Silicon Valley Bank, Signature, and Credit Suisse all collapse within weeks. Fears of a 2008-style banking crisis.
5. October 2023. Hamas-Israel war begins.
6. August 2024. The yen carry trade unwinds. The Nikkei has its worst day since 1987, and global markets follow.
7. January 2025. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek triggers a global tech sell-off. NVIDIA loses $589 billion in a single day.
8. April 2025. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs trigger a 12% S&P 500 decline in seven days.
9. March 2026. The US-Iran conflict closes the Strait of Hormuz. Markets fall around 10% from recent highs.
Six Years In Numbers
At the end of 2019, just before any of this began, the S&P 500 (often used as a benchmark for the global equity market) closed at around 3,231. At the end of April 2026, it sits at 7,209, having recently passed 7,000 for the first time. That’s a gain of 123% over six years.
In 2019, the companies that make up the S&P 500 collectively earned around $139 per share. In 2025, they earned around $253 per share. The businesses you own through a diversified portfolio are earning substantially more than they were six years ago, despite living through everything on the list above.
How many of these events were you losing sleep over at the time? None of these worries were wrong. The events were serious, and being concerned about the world is a normal response. However, hindsight gives us a perspective we couldn’t have at the time.
It shows that short-term feelings and long-term meaning often operate on different time scales. For many long-term investors, the risk of missing a recovery can be as significant as the discomfort of a decline.
The Balance We’re Trying To Hold
Staying informed about the world matters. The challenge for a long-term investor is not letting that information derail your plan. The two can pull in opposite directions, particularly when the headlines are loud.
If you’ve remained invested through these six years, in line with your long-term plan, you’ve learned lessons that will strengthen your resolve if the rest of the decade brings similar uncertainty.
The smart investor’s challenge is to internalise the lessons and be prepared for the next test. That’s how you learn the art of investing.
Compliance disclaimers:
“The value of investments and any income from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back the full amount invested. Past performance should be used as a guide only and is not a guarantee of future performance.”
“Different investors will view these trade-offs differently depending on their objectives, time horizon, and attitude to risk. If you would like to discuss how this relates to your own circumstances, please speak to us”.
Read
What’s the Value of One Day? [10 minutes].
A beautifully written piece that will make you rethink what you’re saving for.
Survival is the Only Success [5 minutes].
The most important investing lesson isn’t how to win big, it’s how to avoid the kind of loss you can never come back from.
Has the World Really Become More Uncertain for Investors? [7 minutes].
The world feels more uncertain right now, but is it really true?
The Reframing Theory: The solution to 95% of your problems [8 minutes].
You don’t need a different life. You need a different lens.
Long-Term Money [4 minutes].
What if your children appearing “spoiled” is exactly what your hard work was always supposed to achieve?.
Rational Optimism
The media is not a friend of the disciplined and patient investor. Ignoring the key determinants of lifetime investor returns, the media focuses on short-term returns, market predictions, and negative news.
We present the following as an antidote to the onslaught of negative news:
Humanoid Robots Race Past Humans in Beijing Half-Marathon
Dozens of Chinese-made humanoid robots showed off their fast-improving athleticism and autonomous navigation skills as they whizzed past human runners in a half-marathon race in Beijing on Sunday, highlighting the sector’s rapid technical advances.
Tesla Supervised Self-Driving Software Gets Dutch Okay
Dutch regulators approved the use of Tesla’s self-driving software with required human supervision on highways and city streets in a European first for the electric car maker, which hopes to see similar action from the rest of the European Union.
The New Jobs Being Created by AI
Artificial intelligence has sparked fears it will become a job killer. It’s also fueling a crop of new careers. AI created 640,000 jobs between 2023 and 2025 in the U.S., according to an analysis by LinkedIn of job posting data, including new white-collar positions such as head of AI and AI engineer.
Visuals
What does the entire S&P 500 actually look like? This visualization brings all 500 companies into a single view, with each sized by its share of the index and grouped by sector. It is based on data from Slickcharts as of March 30, 2026.
The race to build smarter AI models is getting tighter at the top. This visualization, part of Visual Capitalist’s AI Week, sponsored by Terzo, ranks leading systems using data from TrackingAI, which benchmarks models on the Mensa Norway IQ test as of April 2026.
This chart ranks household savings rates across major economies using the latest OECD data. It reveals a wide gap between top savers and those struggling to set money aside. In countries like Sweden and Hungary, households save more than 10% of their income. In the U.S., that figure is just 4.9%.
In some cases, the gap is even more striking. Americans save roughly half as much as households in Mexico, highlighting how cost pressures and consumption patterns differ across economies. Sweden ranks as the most disciplined saver, with net household savings rates rising nearly eightfold from 2.3% to 16% over the past two decades.
Good day Kim,
Thanks for the newsletter and Jacob Schroeder's "What's the value of one day"
It gave me a much needed wake up call and made me appreciate what I have and those people in my life who help and give hope. As the old saying goes, "Today is the start of the rest of your life"
Best regards.
Norman Johnston.