Should you jump in now?

Investor Daily: Ignore, for a minute, the turmoil in the business world. If you have the time (say, six years) and patience, you may want to carefully consider the markets.

(Fortune Magazine) — Has there ever been a time that feels worse than now to talk about houses and stocks? Not in my 40 years of writing about business. The sickening collapses in house and stock prices from their peaks have trimmed about $13 trillion – almost a year’s output for the entire U.S. economy – from Americans’ net worth.

Not since the Great Depression almost 80 years ago have we seen anything like these simultaneous housing and stock implosions, and back then houses and stocks were owned by only a relative handful of Americans, whereas in today’s world, two-thirds of us own houses and half of us own stocks.