Equities

Investing lessons from 150 years of drawdowns

July 09, 2025 - 5 min

Loomis, Sayles & Company

Using the past 150 years for illustration, Aziz Hamzaogullari, CFA®, Founder, CIO, and Portfolio Manager, Growth Equity Strategies at Loomis, Sayles & Company, explains why the risk of downside market volatility is inevitable, frequent, and unpredictable. He discusses:

How history shows that from 1871 to 2022, there were 23 market corrections of 15% or more – one every 6½ years, on average.¹
Why most people believe the world is more certain than it truly is on any given day, but then are suddenly blindsided by a risk no one saw coming, otherwise known as “hindsight bias.”
Why he understands there's always a risk around the corner that no one is talking about, so he embraces this uncertainty and is always prepared to take advantage of it using his prudent, long-term investment approach.
Why he believes the best preparation is a consistent and disciplined ability to allocate capital rationally, based on deeply informed views of reward to risk, and why it demands the temperament and discipline to be a contrarian at all times.

As a patient investor, the Loomis Growth Equity Strategies Team maintains its analysis of high-quality, structural and profitable growth companies to take advantage of meaningful downside market volatility when it occurs.

¹ Journal of Portfolio Management, July 2023, “Fairy Tails: Lessons from 150 Years of Drawdowns,” Ashwin Alankar, Daniel Ding, Allan Maymin, Philip Maymin, and Myron Scholes.

Additional Notes

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