I'd add a caveat about buying on the way down. Buying on the first dip of the 1998 dot com bubble bursting would have left you waiting for 13 years to recover your initial investment (7 years if you bought on the second dip), which would be a huge loss of opportunities to deploy that money in other ways, not to mention losses incurred due to inflation. The picture is even worse for people who tried to pick individual stocks (look at Ford, AT&T, GE -- that never recovered--the same may be coming to NFLX). I don't know too many people who can invest a meaningful amount of money that they know they won't rely on -- if an emergency comes up and you need to liquidate your stocks, knowing that you're selling in deep red territory is a bad feeling. Retail investors should wait for a few weeks of positive stock movement before going in.