long term stock investing

I remember in 2000 when I got my first job out of college and I looked over my 401K benefits material. It had a lot of info on the kind of investments you should have and it said especially as a young person you should have lots invested in stocks. It said the longer the period you are looking to invest for, the more you should invest in stocks. I figured a decade most people who invested in stocks would better off 10 years down the road.

Well, around that time the Dow Jones Industrial was at almost 12000 and the S&P 500 was at about 1500. Today almost a decade later both indexes are well below those levels with the Dow in the 7000 range and the S&P around 800. So basically both are over 30% below their 2000 highs. Think about it, if you had $10,000 invested in stocks in 2000 you would have been better off putting $8000 under your mattress and spending the rest on booze, gambling and strippers than you would have investing in the stock market for the last decade. That is kind of sad.