Today's Market Meltdown

You may be understandably concerned about today's global market declines as insufficient economic fundamentals underpin the Dow and the S&P 500 at its current levels. So any significant bad news, especially firebombing banks and rioting in the streets of Athens when Greece approved the austerity measures required by the IMF and the EU before they agree to give them the money they need to prop up their foundering economy, will shock the markets causing steep declines followed by a slow return to normal after the dust settles and the investor fears are mollified by the realization that the U.S. economy is still chugging along and Greece's economy is smaller than 36 of the states in America.

News reports tell us that today's rapid stock market decline was also exacerbated by an enormous trade error when $10B in stock of a DJI company was sold instead of $10M triggering a massive automatic sell off as stop-loss trades were made by computer until the last domino had fallen. Everyone on the trading floor are pointing fingers at everyone else, but of course no one is responsible or accountable apparently which seems to be the theme of the year at Wall Street from Blankfein on down.

Regardless, no one who needs their money in the next five years should have it invested in the stock market, but if you won't need your money for the next 10 to 20 years, there is really no other investment that will earn as historically a healthy return as the stock market and give you a decent chance to beat inflation and retire in comfort.