The S&P 500 went down -55% from its peak in 2007 to its 2009 bottom
As the chart shows The S&P 500 index hit a top on 10/9/2007 and lost -55.25% before it bottomed in March of 2009. It did not recover its 10/9/2007 top until 4/2/2012 in effect earning nothing for 4.1 years. This can happen again. In 2000 the S&P 500 went down -46.28% from its top ion 8/29/2000 and did not hit that level again until 4/11/2007 (see chart below) in effect earning nothing for 4.6 years. Losing 50% means you have to earn 100% to get back to even. Do you know how much risk you have in your stock portfolio? Columbus can do a historical analysis of your current portfolio to provide some answers.
At Columbus Advisors, we design retirement income to come from Fixed Income Investments (Bond, Bond Funds and Exchange-traded funds, Unit Investment Trusts, Structured Notes, even Guaranteed Income investments) while using Equities (stocks) for future income and growth. We regularly rebalance portfolios (harvesting the gains from appreciating investments) as part of our strategy for our client.