One week the Dow is down 500 points. The next week it is up 500 points. The volatility is driving me nuts. I retired this year and soon I will be taking distributions from my 401(k) to supplement my retirement pension income. A hefty chunk of that 401(k) is still invested in stocks and mutual funds. And as expected, those assets grew nicely over the years - although much more erratically, if at all, during the decade just completed than during the preceding two decades. Well, if I am going to depend on those funds in the very near future, I need to decide whether to convert most or all of them to the relative safety of bonds and bond funds or the "complete safety" of cash. Either way I would be sacrificing potential growth for asset preservation. It would be an easy decision if I knew what the stock market is going to do over the coming decade. Ha! I don't know what it is going to do in the next five minutes, much less the next five years.Being a rational creature, I look to...(Read Full Post)