What to do if the stock market is making you depressed

Just because your favourite stocks are down does not mean you have to be too

- Clara Chong

When I checked my brokerage account on the last day of 2022, I was greeted with a sea of red figures. I logged out within minutes, and contemplated deleting the app altogether. Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?

The year 2022 was a whirlwind one for many investors, with the market suffering significant losses. Rising inflation, interest rate hikes, the war in Ukraine and fears of a recession took the markets on a relentless roller-coaster ride.

Tech stocks, fast growth companies and cryptocurrencies were hardest hit.

The swift change in fortunes also showed me how easy it is to make money, and also very quickly lose it.

The S&P 500 experienced its worst calendar year performance since 2008. The US benchmark index finished 2022 down almost 20 per cent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq similarly entered bear market territory and was down 33.1 per cent at the end of last year.

On the flip side, Singapore's Straits Times Index (STI) ended 2022 up 4.09 per cent, making it among the biggest gainers. This is mainly because the Singapore market has fewer tech stocks, and so avoided being hit by the global selldown.

Those who decided that stock-picking was not their cup of tea may have turned to other investment tools such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

There was still some optimism to be found in ETFs on Wall Street, where more than 400 new ETFs were launched in 2022.

A recent report by Bloomberg showed that energy ETFs did very well the only S&P 500 sector that gained in all of 2022.

Data compiled by Bloomberg also showed that eight out of 10 top-performing funds last year were related to the energy sector.