One can hear many comments about market views and feelings. All of that is simply shoveling smoke. If you want to save for retirement, get into stocks and stay there. Managed mutual funds work best for most people. There are considerable differences between managed accounts, so get some professional help. If you won’t do that, be certain you are not simply choosing the ones that have the most recent good performance. That can be called “momentum investing” but it is harder to do than “buying and holding.” The stock market always takes care of people over the long run. The S&P is simply a measure designed to give you information about the 500 largest stocks in the U.S. It usually doubles or triples in ten year increments but it won’t always. However, you may easily have 30 years ahead of you. In the last 30 years, the S&P doubled about ten times and in the 30 years before that it doubled about 6 times. That means your money, if kept invested would also have doubled that many times. Try doubling $10,000 10 times and you have over $10 million dollars. Presumable you would be withdrawing money from time to time and wouldn’t have quite that much, but you would save a lot for retirement if you simply spend enough time in the market.
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