Kelly Evans: How I learned to stop worrying and love the stock market

I can't tell whether I'm growing up, or having an identity crisis. Or let's put it differently: I'm trying to grow up, and it's causing me to have an identity crisis!  

Here's what I mean. I have had an apocalyptic bent about markets and the economy from a pretty young age. Who knows why, although I believe horror movies (everything's always going great just before something terrible happens), history (the Great Depression! The crash of '87! Japan's "lost decades"!), and the Federal Reserve (whose human control over interest rates seems to constantly create problems) all play a role. 

And then I walked onto the scene of financial journalism in 2007, literally as the housing bubble was popping--which became the first time in modern history that home prices actually fell on a national basis--and the "great financial crisis" began. Did I see it coming? You bet. Unfortunately, like the saying goes, I also saw nine of the next four recessions coming.  

In my early twenties, I had no money, and therefore no "skin" in the game. Fortunately, thanks to my dad's endless 401(k) discussions in our house growing up, I knew I had to put whatever I could into that account as soon as I could, which turned out to be in 2009. Nice timing, with the market bottom. Now, I'm almost 40, and it has really turned into something from those seemingly small contributions over the years. Thank you, dad!  

It would have been more, though, if I hadn't gone to cash in 2012, when I was switching jobs, and convinced we were headed for a double-dip recession. There was good reason to fear that; we had ultra-low interest rates, sluggish growth, the fiscal cliff and the U.S. debt downgrade saga, and so forth. I thought I'd have time, and better entry points, to buy back in; nope. I eventually had to buy back higher.  

I promised myself I'd never try to time the markets again. But then last year, I couldn't resist. We had a chunk of money from a real estate transaction; why put it in stocks, I thought, when we could collect 5% in Treasury bonds and buy back into the market after it sold off? After all, the economy looked like it was rolling over. (I'm still mad about the "false positive" from jobless claims, but at least I learned my lesson this time around.)  

Lo and behold, we ended up buying back into the market higher again. We've also been funding kids' 529 plans and so on, and each time, my husband and I look at each other and think, what if we're buying at the highs? What if it just goes straight down, or nowhere, from here? I at least felt better when Doug Boneparth told us on Power Lunch this summer that the biggest problem he has with clients--especially with millennials like us--is that they're too financially conservative.  

So, it's only taken me 17 years in the business, but I'm finally coming around. Now, I wish we had been so much more aggressive putting money in the stock market over the years.  

The problem is, it feels so unnatural to me to be so...bullish (at least in the long run). I can still rattle off a litany of reasons why past won't be prologue--the demographic winter! inflation! regulations will stifle innovation! we're turning into Europe! the Fed is behind the curve again! these gains are all just nominal, not real! AI is a bubble!--see? But I'm no longer behaving that way. The cost of being out of the market (or gold, Bitcoin, real estate, or other assets) is just too high.  

And the other problem is that when I told my husband I was going to write this, he said, now that's really the sign of a top!

See you at 1 p.m... 

Kelly

KellyTwitter: @KellyCNBC

Instagram: @realkellyevans