Kevin Kroskey's Money & Mind

After the recent downturn in the U.S. and global stock markets, you can be pardoned if you wished that the markets were a bit tamer. Wouldn’t it be nice to get, say, a steady 4% return every year rather than all these ups and downs? Be careful what you wish for. There are at least three reasons why you should hope the markets continue scaring investors half out of their wits. 1) The very fact that stock downturns scare people is one reason why stocks deliver a higher return than bonds. Economists call it the “risk premium;” which can be roughly translated as: people are not willing to pay as much for an investment that will periodically frighten them to death as they would pay for an investment that delivers a less exciting investment ride. Over their history, stocks have been a fairly consistent bargain relative to less volatile alternatives, which is another way of saying that they’ve delivered higher long-term returns than bonds and cash.  2) If you’re accumulating for retireme