Dow 6547 – One Year Later

Sound investment advice in a downturn is crucial, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at what I was posting at this time one year ago today, which turned out to be the day both the S&P 500 and the Dow stock market indexes bottomed.  Of course, no one had any way of knowing that then! On March 10th I posted a link to an article in Kiplinger, “Time to Say Goodbye to the Bear?”  In hindsight, indeed it was.

On March 12th I hosted a “Town Hall Meeting” in our offices which was also available to clients by phone and on the web.  In that webinar, I urged clients to hold the course and gave a plethora of statistics about past market crashes and the ensuing rebounds.

In my followup posting to that meeting on March 17th,  I said, “This was probably the most important teleclass we’ve ever done. Every KFG client needs to hear this information. We urge you to watch this teleclass if you have any financial or economic concerns and especially before your next review.”  How correct that information turned out to be!

Of course, this South Dakota financial planner was not a lone voice in this regard.  Many of my financial planning peers were chanting the same mantra to their clients.

As it turned out, many investors who heeded this investment advice and held the course saw positive returns in 2009 which almost equaled their negative returns of 2009.  Investors who sold equities in March of last year locked in their losses and missed one of the greatest recoveries in history.  I had more to say about that in my February 15th post, “Not A Lost Decade, But A Bumpy Ride.”

What a difference a year makes. A happy birthday it is indeed!