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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chaz who wrote (61285)	9/14/2002 6:52:29 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77399

Nothing scientific. Actually, he knows a heck of a lot less about finances and investing than I do. Mostly, he's always been extremely conservative. I have always labeled myself a conservative until recently, when I started to believe I'm being less than conservative, because my investments are playing out as if I'm taking too much risk for my liking. :) I normally don't mind giving up heady gains in the good years in exchange for minimizing my losses in the bad years. But the last 3 years have been tough to escape losses period. Anyway, in 2000, he lost a tremendous amount of money in his 401K and taxable stock funds. At that point, he sold all his stocks in his tax deferred and taxable accounts and bought bond funds. Then he put a bunch of cash in savings and money market accounts. I told him that he really needed to get himself a financial planner, because long term wealth usually comes from the money you earn on your money, not the money you earn from your salary, and a plan helps you meet your goals. But he has repeatedly told me he's done with stocks forever, and so far he's made out like a bandit, while I've continued to see losses. Now, my losses aren't as bad as what I hear many of my friends are going through, because I am supposedly properly diversified leaning towards a conservative mix, but losses still hurt. The good thing is that my networth is still growing nicely because we save more than a third of our gross. But it would be growing a hell of a lot more nicely if I wasn't losing money every year to market losses. :) So if my brother is any indicator, I think we may have a whole class of investor who has just been soured permanently on the stock market. I think that class may be most heavily represented in the older baby boomer crowd that will retire in a few years, but is also heavily represented in the crowd that is planning to retire in the next 10 years. It's a little startling to me in that a 10 year horizon is a long time to be investing 100% in non-stock releated assets. Or at least it used to be. Now I don't know.