Whenever someone whines to me...

Whenever someone whines to me ... about the stock market decline, I show them a chart like the one at right, and remind them that they haven't “lost” a penny unless they sell.  That chart plots the Dow-Jones index, the NASDAQ 100 index, and the S&P 500 index over the five years.  Yes, the stock market prices have declined a bit over the past few months.  Yes, if you had purchased an index fund at the peak, and sold today, you'd have lost a small percentage.  But ... if you purchased that index fund more than a year or so ago, it's had an appreciable increase in value even with the recent declines.

So after I show them this chart, I tell the whiners that if they are going to have an emotional reaction when they watch the indices every day, then they shouldn't be investing in the stock market at all.  They should instead invest in something less visibly volatile, with a risk/return trade-off they  can live with.  If they can find such a thing – these days the stock market is hard to beat on that score...