For four decades, patient savers able to grit their teeth through bubbles, crashes and geopolitical upheaval won the money game. But the formula of building a nest egg by rebalancing a standard mix of stocks and bonds isn’t going to work nearly as well as it has.
Things are down right now, so of course your balance will reflect that. If you keep investing on a regular basis, the dollar-cost averaging will come into affect over time.
I didn’t read the article, but it seems like they are saying that the way money works is changing. Money, stocks, mutual funds… it’s all the same as it has always been. The risk/reward can change, but there’s no way to predict that.