Good quote there, just like the theory that luck evens out over time. You have a once in a lifetime losing streak you have to handle, it could start tomorrow and crush you quickly, or it could start 20 years from now when you have been running well and it just brings you back to where you should have been. You never know and it takes an awful long time to find out. The one thing I would tend to look at in your arguments is two things. Fundamentally people have changed. A lot more money that was saved in other places before is now in the market. People would have to go back to that mentality to make your long term low numbers make sense. Not that it couldn't possibly happen, but highly unlikely. Second is the fact that these are market indices. Markets are so rich in diversity, its hard to say a market should follow a certain pattern. Up and down bias, yes, but to the degree of hitting certain prices I don't think its that strong a correlation. Individual stocks will see this pattern because people buy and sell them, but relatively little money is out there buying and selling the market itself.