Keep calm and invest away

THE stock market has often seemed incomprehensible in the past year. In January, video game retailer GameStop's shares rose by almost 2,000 per cent in the span of a month as netizens on the WallStreetBets Reddit thread, determined to make institutional short-sellers hurt, flocked to the stock.

Meanwhile, electric-vehicle maker Tesla saw its market capitalisation grow to become larger than the combined valuation of the nine largest car companies globally in December last year, despite only making up 1 per cent of total vehicle sales last year.

Zooming out further, even the S&P 500 index has been incredibly bullish in the past year. Although Covid-19 continues to ravage many countries around the world and some parts of the US where vaccination rates are low, the index rebounded by more than 90 per cent since its crash in March last year.