1 Key Investing Lesson From “Finding Nemo” Movie
Even movies can teach us about investing.
2022 was a challenging year for the stock market, with the US market falling almost 20% during the year.
Towards the latter part of 2022, David Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool, discussed in a podcast how a famous line from the Finding Nemo movie related to the volatile market situation then.
What he mentioned about staying the course and investing for the long term stood out for me.
Here’s what Gardner shared in the podcast (emphases are mine):
“I would say first of all that I’m always investing, ABI always be investing. Chris, I think everybody should always be investing if you are not in retirement. If you’re not about to retire, you should be a net saver and you should just be adding that money to the market through thick and through thin. In this sense, let’s go back to Finding Nemo. …
Just keep swimming. I found myself using that as a hashtag on Twitter throughout a lot this year. I spoke to it on my podcast. It’s always true anyway. If you are earning a salary, you should be saving every two weeks and I think you should be adding it to the market in whatever way you prefer, whatever your orientation is [be it in funds or individual stocks], but just keep swimming …
I think the reason we need to say just keep swimming is not when the tide is coming in and/or the surfing feels good, I think that Dory starts saying just keep swimming because it’s a time of stress. It underscores the times when it’s hard, that’s when we need to hear that phrase, even though we should always be doing that all the time anyway.”
Here’s the clip from the Finding Nemo movie:
So even when the going gets tough in the stock market, remember to just keep swimming…