There’s not much you can say about the beating the stock market has been taking recently. Ever since the U.S. had its credit downgraded by Standard & Poors (that sterling agency that was so on top of it during the 2008 recession and has never been wrong before) there has been immense panic in the markets. The DOW plummets, then shows an uptick, then plummets again, and CNBC tells you the same 15 facts every hour on the hour.
It’s all pretty boring stuff…unless you have an IRA or a 401K and depend on a healthy stock market to have any chance of a retirement. So it’s not so much the day traders or the JP Morgan executives I feel bad for (if VP of something or other gets put out to pasture as they downsize, they’ll still probably get a severance package worth more than most of us make in five years). It’s the middle class citizens thinking they were doing the smart thing by investing early in an IRA for their retirement. I still hold out hope they’ll be okay. Until then, I hold out hope someone will buy you a drink tonight.