re: Investing for the long term

quote:

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If your money was invested with a uniform distribution over that time, it would average out about the same as if you stuck it all in the market in 1999.

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Totally disagree, equity returns are anything but normally distributed. You also are discounting the bull market run up of the late 80's to 2001 when the tech sector blew its wad and 9/11 occurred, PE's were over 45 and companies were being sold for vast sums on a pre-revenue basis (not pre-profit, pre-revenue). Anyone starting to invest in 2002, or avoided the tech sector in 2000 and had a value oriented investment style as part of a diversified plan, would have done magnitudes better.