Four years after the S&P 500 bottomed on Oct. 12, 2022, CNBC's Jim Cramer points to the run as evidence that staying invested beats reacting to bad news. The index has climbed roughly 118% since then, he notes, even as investors faced aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes, a banking crisis, sweeping tariffs and a war in Iran.
Cramer says the rally began amid widespread pessimism about inflation and the economy, and that each setback gave investors a reason to sell. Those who held on, he argues, reaped the rewards. The lesson, in his telling, is that the market's ability to withstand shocks matters more than any single headline.
The source is a single CNBC column, so there is no independent counterpoint to compare. Cramer's framing is explicitly retrospective: it treats the past four years as a case study in the cost of exiting the market, without addressing how investors should judge the next four.