Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
The market does not stay in the valley, nor can you predict the timing of the valley. It didn’t work for you and you missed out on the largest Bull market we have ever seen. Your retirement failed.
Telling someone that he “missed out on the largest bull market we have ever seen” is like telling him that he “missed out on the largest nuclear war that we have ever seen” They don’t call it a bull market unless it contains a mountain of irrational exuberance. Irrational exuberance is not backed by anything of economic significance, just runaway investor emotions. So it doesn’t last. It is Pretend Money. Investors want to believe in the Pretend Money. They become addicted to it and defensive when they hear challenges to its reality advanced to them. Believing in irrational exuberance makes financial planning impossible. It is a huge wealth destroyer. Please spare me from excessive participation in out-of-control bull markets.
Stocks produce genuine economic gains of 6.5 percent real per year. I can live with that. I feel no great desire for the pretend, emotional, bull market, Buy-and-Hold stuff.
Stay the Course!
Rob
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