Now panic?

[javasaurus]

Dow closes down more than 600 points, ending less than 8700. It was at about 14000 one year ago.

GM is at 1950s levels (down more than 30% today).

Cedar Faire (they own Cedar Point, King's Island, King's Dominion, Knottsberry Farm, etc.) is down more than 20% for the day.

Edit: Dow closed down nearly 700 points, ending less than 8600.

Comments

[dawntreader]

i know what you're saying is true. it's just difficult to look at my statements and believe it in my gut. maybe i'll stop opening my statements. ;)

i wonder if anyone knew the stocks would fall like they did and could have moved their stocks around first?

[wilhelmina-d.livejournal.com]

I don't know... I think when Fannie & Freddie started going all wibbly that would have been a good time, but otherwise... I don't know if anyone realized the far-reaching consequences. Still, as javasaurus said, if you have more than 10 years to retirement you're likely to be fine.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

With some 401k plans, when you put in a request to move money around, it can take days or weeks. I think this is intentional so that people keep their eye on the big picture instead of "playing the market" with their retirement. My plan used to allow four such moves per year, and it would occur thirty days after the request. That changed a couple of years ago, I'm not sure what the current rules are. But your plan may have a similar structure.

[cozit.livejournal.com]

For once in his life (well, since he started to play with stocks a little bit), DH was smart and shifted a good portion of his 401K into bonds just before the drop. He rarely plays super safe with investments, so he got really lucky with the timing. Even so, his current retirement value is literally down almost half of what it was early September.

Wanna guess how many times I've mentioned that it's a good thing that he's not planning to retire for another 20 years... at least?

Wanna know how even happier I am that I put my salary from the last few years - aka the kids' school fund (mostly) - first into a CD type account, and it's still sitting in the savings account (slightly kicking myself for not sticking it into a longer term CD when the first ended... but so happy we didn't invest it the way we had originally planned to get around to this summer...)....

Wanna know how amazed my kids are at the fact that when I opened my first savings account, all accounts were 5% return... and that it was better than that for a long time, too... when the girlie saw her first statement earlier this week?

S'okay... at least in savings, they're not going down... they just didn't go up so much first.