Facing the Bear
Nothing could have prepared me for that feeling of terror one morning in Yosemite. And although I hadn’t planned on it, it wasn’t completely unexpected.
About an hour before dawn, I was awakened by the hot breath and scratching of a 600-pound animal. The tent was freezing, we were all curled up in our sleeping bags. I quietly woke the others.
A massive black bear had pitched a small tub of powdered lemonade against our tent, it was snorting and pawing aggressively at its breakfast treat. Only nylon separated us from the beast. We panic-whispered about what to do next.
If you’d visited our family cabin from my childhood, you’d see a lot of bears. A wooden one on the porch offering “howdy” on the way in, rustic pictures with paw print frames adorning the walls, a coffee table book with history and facts. All of them are useless when you confront a real one.
Education and exposure are different things entirely.
One of the most difficult aspects of being an investor is the inevitability of market pullbacks. We’re in the midst of one now. Although stocks have never had a bear market they didn’t recover from, living through these pullbacks is gut-wrenching.
Preparing for a drop is difficult because we never know how deep it will go, how long it will last, or what the circumstances will be. The last pullback looks nothing like the next one because it can’t. Something which takes the market by surprise must be, by definition, a surprise.
In the 1800s, German military commander Moltke wrote: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”.
A century later, Mike Tyson said “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.
No matter how many bear market charts or statistics you see, it’s painful to experience red ink in your investment account. An investment policy may inform us that big drops are possible (and expected), but living through them is another thing entirely. It’s far easier to prepare for facts than emotions.
There are risks in everything, from travel to investing. The average bear market pulls values down 33% and lasts 14 months. Bull markets average nearly 300% gains and a 72-month life. You can’t have a reward without risk, and you can’t have wilderness without wildlife. They’re two sides of the same coin.
According to park rangers, when encountering a bear you must hold your ground, face it, and become bigger through every means possible. Statistics are on your side: According to the NPS, the chances of being injured by a bear are 1 out of 2.1 million. Since 1900, there have been 67 fatalities in North America linked to black bears. Things only get more dangerous if you freak out and run.
One of us (not me 😂) decided to follow the advice and face the bear.
He grabbed 2 skillets, unzipped the tent, and stepped outside. We watched through the mesh as he interrupted the bears’ breakfast with a yell. He stood his ground, 6 feet away, and followed with an iron applause that surely woke the entire campground. The bear looked up, irritated for a moment, then bound away as suddenly as it had arrived.