Stocks Are Forever. That Doesn’t Mean Now Is the Time to Buy.

If you’re finding it hard to remember the pandemic, you’re in good company: Investors have already consigned the Covid chaos to history.

Someone who put $1,000 in the S&P 500 in December 2019—when the first infections occurred in Wuhan, China—and reinvested dividends would have made 6.8% annualized after inflation and had $1,299 by the end of last year. That return is bang in line with the annualized return investors have received in the stock market since 1802.