It’s been eight years since the market hit bottom.  As Morgan Housel of The Motley Fool wrote, “If you went back to 2008 and predicted that over the following eight years the stock market would triple, unemployment would plunge to 1990s levels, oil prices would fall 80%, and inflation would stay tame even while interest rates stayed at all-time lows — I’m telling you, not a single person would have believed you.”

Ok, I didn’t say that exactly, but I got the part right that mattered most.  It was in December 2008.  I was onboarding a new client.  His portfolio was in cash equivalents.  I believed that while we were in the midst of a financial crisis, stocks were oversold compared to intrinsic value.  I told my new client that I believed he had a unique opportunity to triple his money in 5 to 8 years.  Few people are so fortunate as to find themselves with cash at the bottom of a market.

in April of 2009, he fired me.  My mistake was to buy equities in the last days of February, within a week of the absolute bottom.  In retrospect, my timing was nearly perfect, but he couldn’t handle it.  I called him a couple of years ago.  He told me firing me was the biggest mistake he ever made.  I’m guessing it hasn’t gotten any better for him.