ofcmetz wrote:S&P was 1178 when this thread was started, and my portfolio has doubled since then. (And I'm not even counting dividends). Stay the course bogleheads. Keep following your plan even when things look bad and all the news is negative.
I remember when it was 'Dow 36,000' and 'stocks provide real returns of 7% pa' in 2000.
The ironic thing is that the predictions for internet shopping, broadband penetration, internet access by mobile *all came true*-- within 1-2 years of the forecast data Mary Meeker and that were putting on their presentations. In fact mobile internet access is probably ahead of predictions.
Yet the stocks tanked. The TMT sector was something like 40% of US stock market at the peak (Tech-Media-Telecoms). AOL-Time Warner turned out to be the largest value destroying merger in history. Amazon reached its peak then, as a stock, I think without checking. It's now something like 10 times the size as a business, but not as a market capitalization. 1999 was the year Berkshire Hathaway, resolutely 'old economy' underperformed the S&P500 by something like 30%.
So the lesson is when things seem too good to be true, and it's a bright new future, then probably we have hit the peak.
Markets climb a 'wall of worry'. Lots to worry about, markets can still go up.