This Week in Headlines: Just A Bunch of Noise

Headlines from the past week:

• This Monday: Dow Slides 203 Points
• Tuesday: US Stocks Explode Higher, Dow Surges Almost 900 Points
• Wednesday: Dow Decked in Final Minutes; 280-Point Gain Becomes 74-Point Loss
• Thursday: What GDP Slowdown? Dow Advances 189

Jeez. What a rollercoaster. No wonder people are stressed.

Want to know how to sleep easily when your IRA/401k’s value keeps bouncing all over the place?

Ignore It. Completely.

…because, for most of us, it’s absolutely irrelevant what the market did this week. It’s irrelevant what it did this month. In fact, it’s irrelevant what it will do in all of 2008.

Unless you’re planning on taking your money out soon (because you’ve retired and need to use it for living expenses, not because the market has gone down), it doesn’t really matter what the market is doing. All that matters is where the market will be 10 (or 20, or 30, or 40) years from now.

My bet? It’s going to be up. A lot. So I think I’ll keep investing and ignoring the news.  It can be fun to be Oblivious. (And it’s a heck of a lot easier than worrying.) You might want to try it. 🙂