I never said "permanent prosperity" anywhere in my comment. Of course the market has boom and bust cycles. Will the market pull back sometime in the near future

I never said "permanent prosperity" anywhere in my comment. Of course the market has boom and bust cycles. Will the market pull back sometime in the near future? Probably. However, it just doesn't matter for anybody with an investment horizon over 10 years. The gravity of the markets is upward. Timing the broad market consistently is statistically impossible. The subprime mortgage crisis was statistically a once in a lifetime drop, only comparable to 1929. It's occurance was due to a fundamental flaw in the system. It wasn't part of the standard "pattern of the market." Everybody sitting on the sidelines waiting for the next flaw to rear its head will likely decompose before that happens. The size of your future returns directly correlates to the amount of risk you are taking. If you are on the sidelines it's a statistical certainty you'll get destroyed by inflation.