--- title: Why Millennials Should Be Stoked About the Stock Market Crash description: While it's painful to check your 401(k) balance, lower stock prices today will benefits retirement savers in the long run. authors: - name: Ian Salisbury role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/ian-salisbury-2/ bio: Ian Salisbury was a senior editor at Money, focusing on investing, banks and mortgage. at_money_since: 2013 articles: 91 covers: - Investing - Economy and Politics - Housing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes former_staff: true published: '2018-02-09T20:45:33.000Z' modified: '2018-02-09T20:45:33.000Z' section: Investing tags: - Investing - retirement savings word_count: 349 canonical: https://money.com/millenial-investors-cheer-bull-market/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Trading On The Floor Of The NYSE As U.S. Stock Rout Cools](https://img.money.com/2018/02/180209-stock-exchange-correction-good-for-millennials.jpg) *Pedestrians pass in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, on Feb. 6, 2018. U.S. equity indexes climbed higher after a rocky start, and the benchmark gauge for U.S. share volatility reversed course after hitting a two-year high.* The stock market is down more than 10% in the last few weeks, raising the prospect that millennial investors, who just a few days ago were [bragging about their 401(k) balances](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/people-are-bragging-about-becoming-401k-millionaires----and-posting-their-balances-to-social-media-2018-01-29) on the Internet, could face their first real bear market as investors. For millennials, who witnessed the 2000 tech wreck and the 2008 financial crisis in their youth, the market's plunge may seem like a tough break. But in reality, long-term investors saving for retirement — especially young workers decades away from leaving the workforce — might as well be cheering for the stock market crash. If history is any guide, this momentary drop in equity prices will only mean that the retirement accounts of young investors who stay the course will be that much larger in the future. The logic is pretty simple: Saving for retirement entails buying stocks now to sell much, much later — when you actually need to tap your accounts at retirement. The cheaper you can buy those shares for now, the better off you'll be 30 or 40 years later. As you probably know, the aim of investing is to buy low and sell high. To be sure, when the stock market goes down, the shares you have already accumulated may be temporarily less valuable. But the shares you will be buying in the near future have just become significantly cheaper — almost as if they're on sale — allowing you to buy bigger stakes of companies for the same dollar amount. Consider an investor who opened a 401(k) and started contributing $1,000 a year to a portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds in October 2006, when the stock market hit its first post-dotcom-bubble record high. Five years later in September 2011, the investor would have had about $6,520. By contrast, an investor who opened a similar account in March 2009, in the depth of the financial crisis bear market, would have had $8,110 five years later. Of course, you only get this advantage if you're brave enough to hang in there and invest through a market decline. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/millenial-investors-cheer-bull-market/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Investing", "item": "https://money.com/investing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Investors", "item": "https://money.com/investors/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Why Millennials Should Be Stoked About the Stock Market Crash" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/millenial-investors-cheer-bull-market/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/millenial-investors-cheer-bull-market/", "name": "Why Millennials Should Be Stoked About the Stock Market Crash", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2018-02-09T20:45:33.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/millenial-investors-cheer-bull-market/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/millenial-investors-cheer-bull-market/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2018-02-09T20:45:33.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "Why Millennials Should Be Stoked About the Stock Market Crash", "articleSection": "Investing", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2018/02/180209-stock-exchange-correction-good-for-millennials.jpg", "width": 5064, "height": 3376, "caption": "180209-stock-exchange-correction-good-for-millennials" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ian Salisbury", "url": "https://money.com/author/ian-salisbury-2/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/ian-salisbury-2/#author", "description": "Ian Salisbury was a senior editor at Money, focusing on investing, banks and mortgage.", "image": "https://img.money.com/2014/06/Ian-Salisbury.png?w=226&h=247&crop=1" } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2018-02-09T20:45:33.000Z", "description": "While it's painful to check your 401(k) balance, lower stock prices today will benefits retirement savers in the long run.", "abstract": "While it's painful to check your 401(k) balance, lower stock prices today will benefits retirement savers in the long run.", "@id": "https://money.com/millenial-investors-cheer-bull-market/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2018-02-09T20:45:33.000Z", "wordCount": 349, "keywords": [ "Investing", "retirement savings" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Investment", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Investor", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor" ] } ] } ] } ```