The kind of success we’ve seen from Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE: RR.) shares in the past two years doesn’t come along very often.

After the company’s storming recovery from its pandemic thumping, it’s turned into a real growth star. And in just the past two years, the stock has become a six-bagger.

Every £5,000 invested in Rolls-Royce shares in the middle of December 2022 will have grown to a bit over £31,000 today. And a full £20k ISA allowance could now be worth £126,000.

How could we miss it?

Hindsight is all well and good. But what signs were there in the past few years that we can learn from today? The main one for me comes when we look at the hammering the FTSE 100 took in the stock market crash of 2020.

What was everyone doing that year? Selling stocks. What should they have been doing? It seems clear now that investors should have been buying.

But the knee-jerk market reaction to bad news is what can give private investors an edge. What was it that billionaire investor Warren Buffett once said about gloomy times?

Every decade or so, dark clouds will fill the economic skies, and they will briefly rain gold. When downpours of that sort occur, it’s imperative that we rush outdoors carrying washtubs, not teaspoons.

— letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, 2016

Raining gold

Admittedly, the bad news of 2020 could have turned out much worse. But by the time we neared the end of 2022, it was becoming clear that we were beating the pandemic. Civilisation wasn’t about to collapse. And all our top companies weren’t going bust.

If any of the worst-case scenarios actually came to pass, we’d have had far more to worry about than our Stocks and Shares ISAs anyway.

In times of economic trouble, I reckon we should simply assume that the stock market will pull through. It has done every single time so far for more than a century, and has come out stronger each time.

Rolls-Royce was possibly the most spectacular success this time, but we’ve had a good few others.

Stock market recovery

The same £5,000 invested in NatWest Group shares two years ago would be worth around £7,800 today, plus dividends. Invested at this time in December four years ago, it could have grown to nearly £12,000, again with dividends on top.

That’s not the same multi-bagger win as Rolls-Royce, but it’s still a cracking result. And other banks and finance stocks, among the hardest hit in any economic crisis, have rewarded investors well.

So when the next stock market crash comes along, I’ll be planning to invest as much as I can in top-quality FTSE 100 stocks while they’re cheap.

What next for Rolls-Royce?

Rolls-Royce shares have climbed to a growth valuation now, with a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 32 for this year. But forecasts continue to show earnings growth and could drop that to 25 by 2026.

Investors need to balance that optimism with the risk of a slump should growth start to slow, but the uncertainty keeps me away right now.