My Retirement Account Grew 71%—Which Probably Means a Stock Market Crash Is Coming

My individual retirement account has grown 71% since I started managing it in early 2020 after rolling over a retirement account. According to Google, that qualifies as “very strong performance.”

Should CNBC give me my own investing segment? Absolutely not.

That impressive return is based on my portfolio balance today. By tomorrow—or possibly before lunch—the market could ricochet in either direction and humble me back into my proper station in life.

When I appointed myself manager of my retirement account, I prayed for God to guide my investing decisions. Even while praying those words, though, I already had a foolproof strategy.

I would simply take a page from Warren Buffett’s playbook: buy high-quality companies and hold them long term.

Then I'd sit back and watch my portfolio grow.

Easy peasy.

COVID Changed Everything

My husband, Jay, had managed our personal investments for years, back when platforms like TD Ameritrade—now part of Charles Schwab—made trading accessible to ordinary people.

He helped me set up my account and pick a few starter stocks.

Then COVID hit.

Suddenly, people worked from home—or didn’t work at all. Businesses shut down. Families fled cities for larger homes farther away from their offices they no longer visited. The market turned upside down as investors dumped oil, travel, restaurants, and anything involving human interaction.

Everyone seemed to fear a stock market crash. Instead, the market launched into a bizarre COVID-era rally fueled by technology, vaccine makers, electric vehicles, and stay-at-home stocks.

Naturally, we did too.

We spent most weekdays glued to CNBC from 6:30 a.m. until nearly market close. Living on the West Coast turns stock investing into a full-contact breakfast sport.

When I Became an Investing Genius

I invested heavily in tech stocks and dabbled in several COVID darlings.

The unrealized gains were intoxicating.

From 2020 through mid 2022, my account rose roughly 30%, outperforming the accounts Jay managed.

This was important information which I brought up frequently.

Jay and I have very different investing styles. He’s a trader—possibly a traitor. Stocks are not his friends. They are tools. Disposable income-producing tools.

He makes multiple trades a day. I, meanwhile, can go weeks without touching my portfolio. I become emotionally attached to stocks the way some people bond with rescue dogs.

When one of Jay’s charts starts looking shaky, he sells faster than contestants slapping the button on Family Feud.

Meanwhile, I sit there whispering things like, “It’s okay, everyone has bad days. You’ll bounce back.”

At that moment in history, my strategy was winning.

I practically pulled a muscle patting myself on the back. I was basically the ten-talent servant from Matthew 25.

Know When to Hold ’Em, Know When to Fold ’Em

Maybe Not a Stock Market Crash, but Definitely a Market Correction

Unfortunately, I did not know when to fold ’em.

Turns out, I was not the ten-talent servant.

During 2022, I not only lost my 30% gains, but watched my balance dip below my original investment.

Ouch.

Suddenly, I had tremendous compassion for the one-talent guy. Maybe he wasn’t lazy. Maybe he’d simply feared owning too many tech stocks and ending up in my sad predicament.

At some point I probably prayed something like:

“Lord, every day I ask You to help me make wise investing decisions. What gives?”

And God likely responded something like:

“Jay warned you the market was overheated and tech stocks were overbought.”

To which I mentally replied:

“Jay predicts a market correction every other week while simultaneously preparing for the Cascadia Subduction Zone to send us into the Stone Age.”

God:

“This time he was right.”

Me:

“It would be much easier if You’d just email me every morning with a list of stocks to buy and sell.”

God:

“Where would the faith be in that? Besides, this is more entertaining.”

Emotional Investing

I hadn’t listened because I loved my stocks.

A couple of them were companies I’d discovered myself—not ones constantly hyped on CNBC. They’d inflated both my portfolio and my ego.

And they were good companies. Surely they’d recover eventually.

So I held on.

And held on.

And held on while those stocks fell like my initial buy-in in a slot machine.

I kept bailing water while my portfolio quietly reenacted the sinking of the Titanic.

Most of my tech, auto, and fintech stocks collapsed. Meanwhile, Jay’s relentless selling and repositioning allowed his portfolio to weather the downturn far better than mine.

I’d mocked his trigger finger.

Now I was Googling phrases like “how long do bear markets last” and “can stress cause eye twitching.”

The Long Road Back

Many experienced investors say bear markets are buying opportunities.

That sounds wonderful unless all your money is already trapped inside stocks currently down 20–50%.

I had very little cash available, so I painfully sold some weaker positions at losses in order to invest in companies with stronger recovery potential.

Thankfully, many eventually rebounded. But it took over a year for several stocks to claw their way back to pre-correction levels.

Now I try to be more disciplined. When a stock shoots upward on hype, I occasionally trim my position and wait for reality to re-enter the chat.

But selling is hard.

There’s always the fear that the second I sell, the stock will soar another 40% out of pure spite. Ironically, some of my biggest winners today are the very stocks I stubbornly refused to sell during the downturn.

That’s the maddening thing about investing: sometimes holding is wisdom, and sometimes it’s financial Stockholm syndrome. Distinguishing between the two is apparently an advanced spiritual gift.

Why I’m Writing This Before the Next Correction

Most of the time Jay’s portfolio outperforms mine percentage-wise.

But right now?

I’m winning.

Which is precisely why I felt compelled to write this blog immediately—before the market winds change direction, and it drops 15%, my gains evaporate, and Jay regains the lead while trying not to look smug. Actually, he might not even try to cover his delight.

Because if history has taught me anything, it’s this:

I am not Warren Buffett.

I’m probably not even the five-talent servant.

I’m somewhere between the five-talent guy and the one-talent guy—earnest, occasionally overconfident, emotionally attached to stocks, and one bad earnings report away from humility.

Still, over the past few years, investing has taught me something valuable: success can inflate your confidence just as quickly as losses can deflate it. Markets rise. Markets fall. Human beings panic, celebrate, overreact, and repeat.

And somewhere in the middle of all that volatility, God remains steady—even when my portfolio is not.

Blessings,

Angela

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Angela L. Gold is an encourager who shares the love of Christ in her writing. She is the author of The Lion Within and Kill Shot.