StockPetsSTORIES FROM THE FARM
If You Went Back to 2022, Could You Hold Growth Stocks Through the Rate Hikes?
· The StockPets team · Updated
In time-travel stories, 2022 looks like a quiet year. No bank collapsed and the world didn’t shut down. But relive it one month at a time, watching rates climb all year while the stars of the last boom get cut in half, and you start to see why so many people remember it as the bear market that felt longest.
Short answer
Knowing the ending doesn’t make it easy. The S&P 500 fell about 25%, from a record close of 4,796.56 on January 3, 2022 to 3,577.03 on October 12, and didn’t set a new record until January 19, 2024. That same year the Fed raised its policy rate by 4.25 percentage points. In StockPets, you live through this stretch one month at a time on real historical month-end prices, so you can test your own choices with no real money.
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The 2022 bear market in one paragraph
Pandemic-era stimulus and tangled supply chains pushed US inflation up fast. In June 2022, consumer prices were up 9.1% from a year earlier, the biggest jump in about 40 years. The Fed made its first hike in March, a half-point move in May, then four straight three-quarter-point hikes starting in June, ending the year at 4.25–4.50%. Growth stocks, priced on profits far in the future, took the hardest hit. For the year, the S&P 500 lost 19.44% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 33.10%.
| When | What really happened | S&P 500 that month (month-end close) |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2022 | Record close of 4,796.56 on Jan 3 | About −5% |
| Apr 2022 | Growth stocks slide | About −9%, the worst month since March 2020 |
| Jul 2022 | The “it’s over” rally | About +9% |
| Sep 2022 | Third straight 0.75-point hike | About −9%, month-end close 3,585.62 |
| Oct 2022 | Bottom of 3,577.03 on Oct 12 | Month-end bounce of about +8% |
| Jan 2024 | New record close on Jan 19 | A little over two years after the peak |
Trap #1: Remembering that “last time it ended fast”
In 2020 the crash was over in two months. Travel back to 2022 and that memory can work against you. This time the bottom took nine months and a new record took two years. Along the way there were big up months like July. If that rally convinced you it was over, August and September would have pushed you back down.
In StockPets, a seed’s price history only shows up to the current game month. When the ending you remember and the screen in front of you disagree, you have to decide all over again, every month, which one to trust.
Trap #2: The most familiar names shrank the most
Over 2022, Meta fell about 64%, Tesla about 65% and Amazon about 50%. Meanwhile the S&P 500 energy sector rose about 59%. The names that shone brightest in 2020 and 2021 were the ones that hurt most in 2022.
The StockPets seed shop follows S&P 500 membership as it was at the time. Seeds appear in the month a company joined the index, so Tesla, added in December 2020, isn’t in the 1996 shop. By the time you reach 2022 the seed list looks very different from 1996, and what you planted turns the same year into a completely different story. We explain the membership rules in how stocks get added to the S&P 500.
Trap #3: Interest rates aren’t on the seed shop screen
StockPets never shows you a policy rate. The game doesn’t invent news about specific companies, and it describes how your crops did with a single line of market weather. A player reliving 2022 doesn’t see Fed announcements. They see crops shrinking every time they turn the calendar. Without a time traveler’s memory, you’d be walking into storms without knowing why.
That makes 2022 hard to sit through whether you know the reason or not. Judging only by prices is also a different experience from a live paper-trading app. We compare the two in StockPets vs. paper trading apps.
Trap #4: The road to 2022 is the longest yet
January 1996 to January 2022 is 312 months. After the first 12 months, one calendar page refills every 8 hours, up to 3 pages, so you can move at most three months a day. Reaching January 2022 takes about 100 days of real time. By then your farm has already been through the dot-com crash, 2008 and 2020, so this year’s slide lands on something you’ve tended for a long time.
Getting through 2022 itself takes twelve calendar turns, at least four days. Even if you want to rush through the bear market, the calendar never holds more than 3 pages. The pacing is explained in how to play StockPets.
What you take away
The 2022 fantasy usually ends with “sell tech in January, buy back in October.” In StockPets you can only act on month-end prices, but this time the September close of 3,585.62 was almost identical to the October 12 low. Your memory lines up unusually well. Sitting through nine calendar turns from the end of December 2021 to the end of September is still another matter.
To compare it with earlier crises, read Back to March 2020 and Back to 2008. For the whole decade of the 2000s in one piece, read the lost decade.
Frequently asked questions
How much did the stock market fall in 2022?
The S&P 500 fell about 25%, from a record close of 4,796.56 on January 3, 2022 to 3,577.03 on October 12. For the full year, the S&P 500 lost 19.44% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 33.10%.
How much did the Fed raise rates in 2022?
The Fed raised rates by 0.25 points in March, 0.50 in May, 0.75 each in June, July, September and November, and 0.50 in December. The target range went from 0.00–0.25% to 4.25–4.50%.
Why do growth stocks fall more when rates rise?
Much of a growth stock’s value rests on profits far in the future. Higher rates shrink what those future profits are worth today and make bond yields more attractive, so growth stocks tend to swing harder. It doesn’t always play out that way, though.
Can you buy at the October 12, 2022 price in StockPets?
No. StockPets moves one month at a time on month-end closing prices, so your choices are the end-of-September or end-of-October price.
Can I use StockPets to practice real investing?
StockPets isn’t investment advice or a trading simulator. It’s a game where you live through past market history with virtual coins. Past prices don’t predict future results.
StockPets is a game that uses virtual coins only. Nothing on this page is investment advice, and past price changes do not predict future results.