I don't want to sound insensitive, but wonder if many of us whose nest eggs have been scrambled would feel like posting here. The point is that most posters show better results than the market, whether the Dow or S&P500, as measured from trough till now.
And here is another point. It appears that many of us were shuffling money around in the last 2 years. Call it market timing or "rebalance" as you wish, but we as a group did quite a bit of that with various results.
Look at the S&P500, which peaked in Oct 07 at around 1550. The bottom was in March 09, at 735. It is now at 1145.
Now, suppose a person has 50% in SP500, and 50% in low yielding bond or cash at the top of the market. Suppose further that she did nothing and held on without adding money nor withdrawing. At the bottom of 09, she would be down 26% relative to the top in 07. At this point, she would still be down 13%.
Compared to the above, it looks like most people here were down more than 26%, and yet, recover at this point to better than 13%.
I therefore conclude that we as a group hold stocks with a higher beta than the S&P500. Either that, or our "rebalance" hurt us during the downdraft but helped during the upswing somehow. Comments?