Long Term Investing in Equities

It doesn't really matter what your investment adviser has been telling you.  Continuing to make monthly contributions to you retirement account doesn't necessarily result in higher returns.  However, it does make your adviser more money since they are basically paid based upon how much "Assets Under Management" they have.  They get paid by the mutual funds they have clients money invested in.  When is the last time you got a call from your adviser suggesting you should be in cash?  Why would they...it takes money out of their pocket.  Take a look at this long term chart spanning from 1996 to today:

The Green dotted line approximates today's close.  That line extends back to 1999.  If you invested your funds in a market index fund back in 1999 and added to the account each month (dollar cost averaging)  you would be break even.  12 years of investing, and, nothing to show for it.  On the other hand, if you sold your index funds near the prices identified by the MACD (shown below price, ie red circles), and, bought near the green circles, you would have made significant progress towards increasing your wealth.  The message is that blindly throwing money into the market isn't the best way to increase your wealth.

Currently, the monthly MACD hasn't gone negative and the 200 month ema hasn't been broken.  Should both of those turn negative 700 is the next target.  Let's hope that doesn't happen.