And most of those stock indexes recovered within 1-2 years. If you didn't panic sell your paper loses would have gone away pretty quickly. Not to mention almost

And most of those stock indexes recovered within 1-2 years. If you didn't panic sell your paper loses would have gone away pretty quickly. Not to mention almost no one's cost basis would be the peak price from 2007, most people would have an average cost basis of lower than that do to periodic investments from previous years. If your doing a long-term buy & hold strategy, you really don't need to worry about temporary dips in your portfolio. That's why the ETF-and-forget-it long-term strategy is nice. If you're investing and you don't have a long time horizon or you're scared of a dip in your portfolio, you don't belong in the stock market anyway (stick to bonds and other conservative investments).