I stayed.

i stayed, mostly moved to gold pretty early and made gains on that. since the beginning of the yr i've been plowing $$ into it, since banks are not paying much in interest rates. i have another 30+ yrs to make my goal of $4-5 mil for myself so i can subside off interest alone, around $100K a yr. ~ liz

I stayed, and glad to see things looking better. If it tanks, I'll still survive.

Sue

I stayed and added.

Not only did I stay but in April I increased my percentage of stocks. Just again last week I went more aggressive adding Emerging Markets, sold T-Bonds and bought High Yield Corporate Bonds, and added more stock funds.
I've made a lot back but I'm holding my breath and praying the market won't tank. I use a NAFPA, (Fee only), financial advisor. I told him I want to invest more aggressively in order to make my money back.
Donna

I sold all ahead of the big drop(over a year ago), then bought a little 2-3 months ago(which is now tripled). Not buying now.

I'm one who has never trusted the stock market. Give me an old fashioned savings account. It may not earn a lot of interest but it's safer then stocks.

SamKaren
your resident DJ

I bought a LOT more.

I just left it where it was. I sure took a hit, but it is coming back a little. I'll ride the course.
Leslie

Maybe I'm dense, but I couldn't understand people who bailed. Why in the world sell things when we're in a recession and (most) everything was down? Why would you sell something for so little, unless you really, really needed the money at that point? So totally opposite of the "buy low, sell high" advice.

For stocks, I left everything and now it's starting to come back. For other investments (401k, IRAs, etc.) I left everything and continued to buy, but at a much reduced price. Now the things that I continued to buy, very low, are worth more. I'm not smart at all about financial things, but it seemed pretty basic to me that selling things cheap or stopping the purchase of things when they were cheap didn't seem logical.

Suzieque

We stayed the course...
and we have been putting as much as we could into individual stocks (doing the "buy low" thing!).

We 'got conservative' before the recent slide. Had taken out of portfolio to build a house before the dot-com slump. Now we're left wondering what we'd do with anything we sold today.

Already looking for 'parking' for some CD's coming due end of September. Bye-bye 4.6% APY. (And bye-bye to the bank that issued them:Corus.)

DH and I are retired Seniors. Should be OK for the 20+ years we probably have left, but are not playing roulette at this stage in life.

" I'm one who has never trusted the stock market. Give me an old fashioned savings account. It may not earn a lot of interest but it's safer then stocks. "
Over the long run this statement is not accurate. Keep your money in a savings account and over time inflation will eat away at it. Historically stocks have always outperformed other investments. Your money isn't safe if it doesn't keep up with inflation.
By investing in stocks you are buying a piece of American corporations. Purchasing stock is a part of keeping our economy moving.

I may have lost a lot in the recent ressesion, but I made far more than I lost overall.
Donna

We stayed but did some shifting around and we actually did some buying...We have once again been making some money but I doubt we will live long enough to re-coop our losses.

IMO you have to 'consider the source' when you hear brokers and investment pundits tell you to just keep socking money into the market, payroll deduction-style. Of course THEY want people to continue to invest!

It took over twenty years for people to recoup losses they had in 1929. (It took a world war to start priming that pump again.) Although the market was inflated before the crash, and we have to remember that, it wasn't until the early 1950's that the Dow reached the pre-crash level.

This era of large public investment in the market is relatively new. I first became aware of it when our painter showed up to paint the living room and tuned our TV to a market report -- about 1980?

My 401K went from $110,000 to $85K. I stayed in and it's back to $106,000. The stock markewt is over 9300 today.

I actually just set up a 401k this year for the first time. Since it was so low, and I figured it would probably go up and I chose a moderately aggressive portfolio, and I just got my first statement and am pleasantly surprised! I don't really trust the whole thing either, but since my work puts in whether I do or not, I figured I'm young enough that I should start investing some myself somewhat aggressively.

The idea, as I understand it, is to become smarter as the years go by.

When I was a kid, we always had a car (including a couple built by companies that went out of business later: "Star"? "Willys-Knight"?) but some people went around in horse-drawn buggies.

Do you still go around in a buggy?

To invest one's assets only in guaranteed-dollar assets reduces risk, yes ...

... over the short term.

But over the longer period, especially in the current low-interest rate environment, interest-earners get slaughtered.

In the personal money management business in which each of us participates, most of us except very low earners have a partner whether we like it or not.

Every year, that partner has a question, and a statement, for each of us who earn more than a minimal amount ...

... "How much did you earn?" and "We want part of it".

The income tax people are required partners in our personal money-management business.

Another way of looking at it is that there are two rats that eat your cheese.

Except for very low income earners, the income tax people want part of our annual earnings.

But that's not the only problem - there's the other rat's depradations.

That rat eats the value of part of our assets, each year.

If you put $10,000. into the bank 15 years ago, they'd pay you rent on the money each year - that's taxable that year.

But that's not the only eroder of value that you face. Since the depression of the 1930s, the value of each of those saved (but many of us say, not invested) dollars shrinks every year that it's used in such a fashion.

If you put that $10,000. into a bank 15 years ago, it would have bought a nice new car ... but, in the ordinary course of things, if you took it out now, it wouldn't: it'd buy a lot less, due to inflation.So those who earn interest must add part of the annual earnings to the principal in order to maintain purchasing power.

The owner of the money gets what's left .. and never forget ... the rats eat first!

Forty-two years ago I used about $4.20 to buy a share of a Canadian bank and they paid me a dividend (taxed, in Canada, a lot lower than interest earnings) of about a dime or 12 cents a year.

Over the years, the value of the shares grew. Despite their having had some involvement with the Enron crisis, a few years ago, even so, had I sold those shares in June 2007 they were "worth" (whatever that means) $107.

And, as the value of the stock grew, the dividend rates did, as well - to $3.08 per year in mid-2007 - on that original investment of $4.20 or so. In the fall of 2007 they increased it to $3.48 (which increase was, please note, almost 10% of the originally invested amount).

That bank was also involved doubly, so I hear, in the U.S. stinky mortgage fiasco, as they had direct exposure, and backed a company that insured those mortgages!

So the value of the stock fell - through the 90s, 80s, 70s and 60s, over a period of months. Eventually it got down to around the low 40s, last Nov. ... but still paying that dividend of $3.48 annually, over 9% - as, noted above, low tax rate, and even lower due to recent changes in calculation rate.

Could you have found a GIC that would, after 40 years, produce an annual rate of return of over 75% of the originally invested amount??

My grandpa bought a 250-acre farm near an Ontario village in 1917 - sorry, I don't know how much he paid.

Dad took it over shortly after his marriage in 1925. Mom got sick in '34, Grandpa died in '35, Mom died in '42.

Dad had trouble breathing in this part of the country so moved to farm on the Prairies in '46, I left home in '48.

Dad sold the Ontario farm in 1947 - for $15,000.: our family had owned it for 30 years.

The family who bought it later agreed with hydro for an easement to install some electric towers on the land, later sold about 50 acres to the province when they built a multi-lane divided expressway through the area (largely to assist the large trading business back and forth between Canada and the U.S.).

They sold the remaining 200 acres in 2007, after owning it exactly 60 years ... for about $2.4 million.

That's in addition to it having provided an income for a family of about 6 - 8 kids for several years, then for two families for several years, later for the family of one son.

Would they have done better to have "invested" that money in the bank?

Many of us say that "owning" is better than "loaning" (and the bank makes more on our money than does the owner).

End of rant.

ole joyful

I stayed. I had my broker cut in half the amount I'd been receiving every month, and I made up most of the difference by going back to work part-time.

I lost over 40% of the value of my portfolio. I've made back some, but not all of it. Yet.