Thanks for the kind words.

Although it's tempting to try to time the market--pull funds out of stocks in anticipation of a downturn--it rarely works out for the best. The reason is that upturns in the market can happen so quickly. I've seen studies where having your funds out of the market on the 1% of the days with the biggest gains could cost you most of the market's total return. (Of course your plan would be to be back in the market for those days, but how would you know?)

Here's one article with some numbers on the dangers of being out of the market on its best days: The Folly of Market Timing.

My advice is to start with a good, big emergency fund--big enough to handle an extended period of unemployment, with enough money to cover your planned major expenses. Once you've got that covered, determine an appropriate asset allocation--one rule of thumb is to calculate the stock portion of your investment portfolio by subtracting your age from 100, so a 25-year-old would put 75% of his or her investments in stocks. Then go ahead and take the plunge.

Remember that a falling market is a great time to buy--you're getting the stocks on sale. (Obviously a fallen market is even better, but nobody can reliably know when it's hit bottom.)

Right now is probably a great time for someone with only a small investment portfolio to start moving more heavily into the market, as long as you remember that your investment horizon is decades.