BEAR MARKET LOSSES ARE REAL NOT ILLUSORY

  Many investors, and especially those over age 55, who have less time
to recoup their stock market losses than those in their twenties and thirties, may never recover the losses they suffered in the 2000–2002
bear market. Consider the following statistics from AARP:2
♦ More than $7 trillion—equal to $25,000 for every man,
woman, and child in America—went down the investment
drain in the last three years.
♦ $700 billion in retirement savings were decimated.
♦ A dollar invested in a Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index
Fund in March 2000 was worth about 55 cents as of
August 2002.