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Dear Middle Class,
Your retirement investments are probably now, or soon will be, toast.
I would cash out the rest, take the tax hit and buy gold (if you can find any to buy). That is the only chance you have, in the moderate term, to recoup your losses. It sure as hell beats playing the market again. Unless, of course, you feel particularly lucky at Vegas or the horse tracks, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Cary, better advice here but, really, the mail CAN ruin your life - at least near term, for some, a long time. See, foreclosure notices come in the mail too. Hell, I hate looking at my own online bank statements but you gotta do it at some time or things just get worse.
And lastly, back in August, I literally got on my knees and begged my mother (trying to recover in an extended care facility) to get all of her retirement investments out of the market. She wouldn't listen to me because (1) she worried what her bloodsucking daughter would do (and that's a whole other story) and (2) like most Americans who have been conditioned to worship at the altar of finance and free markets, she really didn't believe it would happen.
I cashed in my last IRA in August and mom saw her once robust portfolio almost fall by a full half.
Too many people learned too late that Wall Street CAN and will eventually hurt you and that no one really cares if the little guys lose their retirements - hell, that's part of the whole plan. Happens generally ever 50 or so years. The bankster thieves and swindlers get bailed out. You get nothing.
