"His belief was that it was likelier to get worse before it got better and that it could be 10 years or more before the economy bounced back. “I think we’ll see

"His belief was that it was likelier to get worse before it got better and that it could be 10 years or more before the economy bounced back. “I think we’ll see Dow 4,000 before we see Dow 12,000,” he told me." sure but as long as you believe the economy is going to bounce back over 10 years then if you took a good piece of your $5m and simply put it into an index fund now, in ten years (retirement) time you'd have a very healthy return on it. i don't agree that now is a bad time to invest. i believe now is a bad time to invest for returns over the shorter/medium term but if you're talking about investing over a retirement time scale then it's during periods like the one we are in where big returns can be made.