Most of you have either recently received or are about to receive your Third Quarter statements from your various investment accounts. We all know that as far as the general markets are concerned – the third quarter was a bad one. Let’s look at the benchmarks:
Dow -12% S&P -14% Nasdaq -13%*

Those are some ugly numbers. But that is history, let’s look at now.
As of 10/21/11 all of the benchmarks were up 5% or better. That is a huge increase for a two week period of time and, certainly, there is no guarantee that will continue, however, let’s look at what opportunities you have had since 6/30/11:
Every two weeks when your 401k or other retirement account deposit hit your account you bought more shares than previously. Everything was on sale and that is a good thing. While you are accumulating funds for your retirement – you want things to be on sale. Over the third quarter, you were able to buy more shares that you could earlier in the year. More shares = potentially more income in retirement.

Keep in mind that we are long term investors – not short term traders. This third quarter opportunity to buy on sale was a gift.

*Yahoo Finance