Why You Should Stick With Stocks

Like fishing in a well-stocked pond, investing has been pretty easy in recent years. Imagine that at the end of October 2007, the month the bull market peaked, you put all of the money you had to invest into a fund that tracks Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. Even with such terrible timing, you would have more than doubled your money as the market produced positive returns in every year from 2009 to 2017.

In late January and early February, the stock market reverted to a pattern of extreme volatility, with the Dow Jones industrial average losing 1,175 points one day and rising 567 points the next. It was a vivid reminder that, as an investor, you don't earn an average of 10% annually without taking some risk and suffering some pain. But there are