"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:11:09 -0800, "Capt. JG"
said:

Nonsense. You're fooling yourself. If today you have an asset that could
be
sold for x, and yesterday it could have been sold for 2x, you've lost
half
the value of the asset since yesterday. You might hope it will again be
saleable for 2x some day, but that's just a hope.


Incorrect. You've lost nothing until you sell it.

Ever hear of mark to market treatment of financial instruments? FAS 115?
FAS
157?

No. I thought not.

It's funny money unless
you sell or reallocate. Did you actually attend accounting 101? LOL

The difference apparently is that my learning on the topic didn't end 35
years ago.


Your rant has absolutely nothing to do with losing or not losing money on a
401K portfolio. The only ways to lose money is for the underlying companies
to go belly up, you sell when the stocks are down, or similarly reallocate
your portfolio, e.g., into bonds from stocks, when the stocks are down.

As I said, you need to either take an updated class or read the original
post.


--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com