Who do you think the biggest losers were in the market losses of the last two years?
Chances are, most of you are thinking boomers, who are looking to actually start cashing in those portfolios within the next couple years or so. But as it turns out, you'd be wrong. The biggest losers are people under forty.
See, people under forty were only just starting to build portfolios back when the big run-up in stock prices happened. Remember that, back in 1987, a five thousand Dow wasn't a catastrophe, but rather the fondest aspiration of everyone on Wall Street. Black Monday, for example, represented a five hundred and eight point drop. That was the largest one day drop in history...until 1997. Then, TEN LARGER ONE DAY POINT DROPS occurred in just ten years.
The biggest climb in stock prices man has ever seen happened in the roughly twenty year period between 1982 and 2000. Thus, anyone under the age of forty, who was maybe twelve when that runup started and was only barely a thirtysomething when it stopped, saw a really, REALLY inhospitable period for stocks. Two full on market collapses, in fact--the so-called "tech-wreck" of 2001 and the "gigantic-super-we're-all-doomed-disaster" that was 2009. That poor schmoe I just described watched his portfolio get slammed by the ten largest single point drops in the Dow's history.
But cheer up, young investors--there's every chance that another super run-up may happen by the time you retire!
...of course, there's also every chance the Earth could crash into the sun first, but I'm not holding my breath for either.
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