Jason Zweig

Because if you've just lost 15% of your money to capital gains tax, that means that you have to make

almost 20%, roughly 20%, just to break even after paying the tax.

And if you do that over and over again, it's very difficult to make that work.

Well, we know markets can go down and will go down.

Yeah, exactly.

So the 401k wasn't devised until about 1980, but it's been around and has grown to a multi-trillion dollar marketplace over the ensuing decades.

But just think about it for a minute.

You know, the market crashed between 2000 and 2002.

It crashed again between 2007 and 2009.

It crashed in 2020.

It crashed in 2022.

And 401k money was pouring in throughout all of those episodes.

So markets go up.

The stock market goes up when corporate earnings go up.

And how much money companies earn is not a function of how much money is going into 401k plans.

They just, there's no cause and effect relationship there.

Exactly.

I would say to people, be careful out there.

And one of the exercises that I love to have people do is at the beginning of the year,

Make a set of predictions.