I’ve become my office’s champion moper. I made the mistake of checking the numbers: On the day I started work as a financial reporter in 1997, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index stood at 973. Now it’s at 795. You can imagine what my 401(k) looks like, but that’s not what has me so gloomy. It’s hard not to wonder whether 12 years of work covering investing did anyone a lick of good.
