2021 was a year of strange. The indexes did not demonstrate the truth about the market conditions at all. Because the indexes are cap weighted, meaning the bigger the market cap is for a stock, the more influential the movement of said stock to be on the measurement of the index.
We are seeing the year end tax loss harvesting hit heavier than normal causing a year end decline as all the institutional investors and hedge funds are rebalancing accounts.
A decade is a long time to assume that every year will be equal to or worse than the year before. Don’t make that mistake- there will also be years when the returns will be outsized and great.