Something to think about...

I saw this on Bob Brinker's site.

"Historically, stocks tend to have the highest rate of return compared to bonds and cash. Of course, they also have the greatest risk due to their higher volatility. The longer the period of the investment, the lower the volatility, because the long-term growth trend of a stock tends to overcome short-term price drops. If you are close to retirement, you may want to stay away from more volatile investments. However, if your retirement is still many years away, it may pay to invest in these volatile markets. Let’s say you invest a lump sum of $100,000 into a highly volatile asset returning an average annual rate of return of 10 percent over 25 years. The year you retire, it suddenly drops by 25 percent. The value of your investment after the drop is $813,000. If you had invested that same $100,000 lump sum into a less volatile investment with a 6 percent return and experienced no 25 percent loss in the final year, you would still only have $429,000 after 25 years. So even with a significant loss, it paid to invest in the more volatile investment."