Brian Williams just came on with a SPECIAL REPORT and said it was a record.

Received an email from my financial advisor, this am, after my sending him a stressful one, and his reply was BE PATIENT!

Glenda, I took a look at my 401K and almost fainted, as I've lost 18%. I want to retire in 5 years, as I am so tired of working! Then I read this thread and will agree with your adviser --- be patient, be patient, be patient....be patient....my new mantra.

Sadly, after DH could not sleep because of our retirement fund, he transferred a part of it in to a CD. Now, he is once again, really unhappy. I wish he had talked to Glenda's adviser.

Moni

Moni, I've been with mine for almost 25 years.
Don't know what I'd do without him.

I haven't look at my retirement fund for 2 weeks, and I won't until it stays up a while, and maybe I'll be even when I do look. I sure love seeing the 900+ closing.
Leslie

All the advice from experienced financial people throughout this crisis has been "be patient". Seems like good advice. Selling when stocks are low doesn't give you an opportunity to recoup your losses when it goes back up. If you are hiding money in your mattress, now is a good time to BUY! Of course the trick is buying stock in a company that won't go out of business before the crisis is over.

I posted in the "hand wringing" thread that I was unhappy to discover my portfolio was almost all stocks. I've since learned that isn't true. My bond funds and some other things trade on the stock exchange, so they show up on the computer as equities. Whew!

A friend and I have been worrying about the market together. We're both widows and the same age. She panicked and sold all her holdings last week. I tried to explain to her what Solstice98 said above: Buy low, sell high....When you sell at a high point you lock in your gain. Conversely, when you sell low you lock in the loss. But like Moni's DH, she said she couldn't sleep. She ordered her broker to get out completely. It was very much against his advice.

I'm not too worried about her, though, because she has a lot more money than I do. :-)

Let's just hope this upward trend keeps going. This past year the stock market has been at an all time high of 14,000 points and ONE year later at an all time low (last Friday.) So seeing it go up 900+ in one day is nice...but I don't trust it to stay that way so we can all regain our footing. The experts say it will take a few years to come back when ever the final low has been hit. That low could have been last Friday, but we won't know if it was for awhile yet.

I agree it is nice to see the little arrows head the other way. Last week was horrible. I looked today and my personal IRA lost 30% and my 403b lost 24% in this past year. And I think it will take 2 years just to regain what I've lost. I still have my Plan A on track to retire next July 1st. I also have a Plan B of working part time and easing into retirement if possible.

My advisor has been saying "Be patient and breathe" everytime I called him in the last few months...which were quite a few.

Let's hope tomorrow see's another good day!!

Susan

I don't think the recession is over yet. Historically, the Dow goes up after a crash, but only briefly, and there are probably further lows ahead. Market drops generally take at least eight months to recover. There was a chart in my local newspaper going back to 1933. I'm staying out of the stock market for a while. Wait till next spring.

They go up a little and then drop because so many people panic and sell the minute it starts to climb again. All that selling creates another drop. Right now, it's the people who are panic selling that are making this worse and dragging it out. Take a deep breath, will yourself to be calm and wait it out. I don't have money to invest but if I did I would be (carefully!) buying.