Your right the market has gone up the last 3 years...and the money I have put in the market since 03 has done somewhat well.
However that does not mean diddly squat to all the people that have had all their pension money in the market before 2000. My Janus, putnam funds etc have still not gone back to what they were in 2000 and in many of my funds they are worth less than what I have put into them.
Thats my point too. You have to look further back than three years. Most people started saving before that.
Fine, but that is an entitrely different subject matter.
The point made was the "stock market has not gone up much" and the factual answer I gave in post #21 was that the market has indeed gone up very sharply.
I was not discussing the entire history of the stock market, including the 2000-2002 era dowturn, but I simply stuck to the point that member made (falsely), and I countered it with facts that proved that member wrong.
Re your comment that your funds are still down from the peak even after a good market since late 2002...........
I am a Certified Financial Planner and Series 7 licensed. I can tell you that either 1] you received no advice and was a "do-it-yourselfer" or 2] you did have advice but you had a poor investment advisor.
First, it should have been apparent that the huge surge in stock prices in 1997-1999 was related to the Y2K spending boom. Also, the previous recession occurred in 1990 so by 1999, it was likley a downturn would occur, especially when Y2K spending dried up.
Second, put options could have protected your money in the downturn, even if you did not sell out at the high before the downturn.
Third, when the stock market fell in 2000-2002, it was NOT every sector that went down. Small and mid-cap value classes did quite well during the downturn. Also, Real Estate related classes (such as REITs and housing related stocks) did very well. In addition, Defense Stocks did very well after 911 as did many industries in security related services. The "crash" was concentrated in Large Cap Growth stocks and in Technology stocks. Money could have been made BIGTIME during the "crash" by buying put options on the Large Cap Growth stocks and technology stocks OR by investing long in the industries and classes that did very well, such as mic-cap value during 2000-2002.
You mentioned you had Janus funds and Putnam funds. Janus is a growth fund specialist organization. Most of their funds got hit very hard simply because they focused on growth (not value) and had huge percentages in technolgy. Putnam New Opportunities and Putnam Vista, Putnam Voyager and many other Putnam funds had a similar story as they focused on growth (not value) and they focused on larger cap companies. (Vista and New Opportunities at one time were small and mid cap funds, but gradually biased toward large cap as the funds got older, and large cap is where the biggest downturn occured).
More than likely you experienced painful losses because you either 1] was a "Do-it-yourselfer" and had no professional advisor or 2] you had a lousy professional advisor.