I Became a Disciplined Investor Over 40 Years. The Virus Broke Me In 40 Days.

I Became a Disciplined Investor Over 40 Years. The Virus Broke Me In 40 Days.

Business | I Became a Disciplined Investor Over 40 Years.. The Virus Broke Me In 40 Days.. I first bought a stock mutual fund during the summer of 1982, as soon as I'd saved enough money to invest.. I loved looking up my mutual fund in the newspaper stock tables.. The Dow had dropped an unfathomable 508 points in one day.. Once I was back in the United States, the market seemed to stabilize.. In hindsight, the first of those 10 percent declines was a foolish time to have been buying, given that the market went down another 40 percent.. So I bought stock (a broad-based index fund) on Feb. 25, jumping the gun on my own 10 percent buying target.. The S&P closed down that day by 7 percent, the biggest drop since Black Monday in 1987.. I was shocked: The stock portion was down far more than the broad U.S. market averages.. My international stock index fund was down 20 percent from its February peak, and the emerging markets fund had lost a quarter of its value.. When the market goes down, it's time to think about buying more stocks - a time that came