On a one-year basis, whether the global stock market goes up or down is pot luck. A correction of say, 20% can happen at any time and that makes a lot of people nervous.

But as the time horizon gets longer, there is no doubting the global stock market delivers returns.

Over 146 years of data on the US stock market (which today is around 52% of the global markets) show the chance of a one-year negative return is about 31%.

However, the longer you invest the lower this probability becomes and over 20-year rolling periods from 1872, there isn’t a single instance in which the market had a negative return:

Okay, this is the US stock market only. It’s the only market to have such data over such a long period of time and you’d be a fool not to invest globally and . Just because you live and work in the UK, why restrict yourself to just 6% of global stocks? Yes, the London stock market is just 6% of global markets.

In summary, invest globally and be patient. Markets have always rewarded long-term, patient investors.