The Dow Will Have to Hit 150,000 Before You Can Retire Comfortably

It sounds like an unimaginably high number, but the math shows that it could happen in a 40-year-old’s lifetime

by Chuck Jaffe
Market Watch

The stock market has bounced up to record levels again, and while investors are right to be skeptical that the strong run can last, they also need to know that the current highs are not nearly enough for their lifetime needs.

In fact, if you’re a 40- or 50-year-old investor, planning for a comfortable retirement and hoping for a lifetime of reasonable returns, you need the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.09% hit 150,000, and the S&P 500 Index SPX, +0.24% blow past 15,000.

Those levels are unimaginable now, and they won’t happen for decades. Younger investors will need for the indexes to exceed even those lofty numbers to get the same kind of average lifetime returns as their forebears.

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