Really? So you think that oil could actually come down a full 20% from its all time high of $147 & change? Wow... That's a mighty bold prediction. Not to brag or anything, but I too can predict past events with an accuracy rate above 95%! (Sorry... I just couldn't let an error like that go without one of my little sarcastic comments. Nothing personal, it's just my nature...)
Since you're asking about the future, no one will tell you the exact truth. And if, by chance, someone tells you the truth, you will never know that it is true until you see it happening. Cutten's advice, though, is the best I've read so far in this thread, IMO.
The only thing that matters to me is that there always will be a market. I don't care if it goes down for the rest of my life i know i can still make money in it. Look on the bright side, if it goes down the next decade the narrow minded one strategy approach of mutual funds and mutual funds themselves will fail because people will take their money out. The mutual fund society misleads just about everyone about the stock market but then again they themselves are mislead by college institutions. College education and the stock market is truly an Oxymoron. Sorry for the tangent's.
$1K investment total return (approx.) for 10 years in: ACAS= $4,650 (optionable) CEF GE= $1,290 (optionable) Large Cap HCP= $4,863 (optionable) REIT HCN= $5,320 (optionable) REIT MSFT= $1,350 (optionable) Large Cap SPG= $5,930 (optionable) REIT SPY= $1,560 (optionable) SP500 BRK.a= $1,930* (no options) Large Cap/Conglomerate; *stock price in 1998: $60K/sh
These are the 10 year rolling returns of the SP500 total return index (including dividends, not inflation adjusted).
Once Bush is gone this should change and we should make up for the slump. The only problem I see is McCain will only do worse and Obama is an idiot so maybe I'm wrong.