Stocks. Smile.

The US stock market is up — sharply. CNMI retirees should be rejoicing. The CNMI Retirement Fund just made a killing in American equities, up more than $20 million for the year. Our IRA and 401 (k) retirement accounts have appreciated quite handsomely, boosting the total value of our investment portfolios. Big smiles everyone.

But will our smiles soon turn into frowns? Hard to say. Nobody can predict the market. Yet, if history is any indication, stocks should continue to appreciate over the next 40 or 50 years.

After all, stocks have already proven themselves to be the best performing investments. They have outpaced bonds, certificates of deposits, and certainly, passbook savings accounts. They have kept investors ahead of both taxes and inflation. Over the past 50 years stocks have, on average, returned at least 10 percent annually.

Granted, the Dow Jones Industrial average already stands at a lofty level, perched up there at the 9,300 level, seemingly within striking distance of the heady 10,000 peak. Stocks may well be somewhat overvalued. It looks like it could be a long fall down.

But if we took a long term view of the market, these dizzying heights really shouldn’t be so intimidating. “If you take a 30-year view of the market,” says Selected Funds executive Shelby Davis, “assume a starting level of 8,000 for the Dow and compound that figure at 7 % annually — not an unreasonable growth rate based on past performance — the Dow would be at 64,000 in three decades.”

Stocks will naturally fall over the next 30 or 40 years. Some falls will even seem like devastating crashes. A lot of money will inevitably be lost. But hold on. Don’t panic. Buy more.

Consider the crash of 1929. The market was down for ten years after the crash. The country was in ruins. The Great Depression was in full swing, interrupted only by World War II — the greatest global conflict in history. What was worse, for a time, New Deal socialism threatened to destroy our very capitalistic, free market system.

But what if you held on during those dark, bleak years — when the whole world seemed about to end? What if you bought a diversified portfolio of blue chip stocks, whatever you could afford, during all that time? Why, by 1953, the beginning of the Ike years, you would have become a very rich man.

Or consider October 1987. Stocks again bounced back after a terrible, short-lived crash.

As Warren Buffet himself noted, “Smile when you read a headline that says ‘Investors Lose as Market Falls.’ Edit it in your mind to ‘Disinvestors Lose as Market Falls . . . But Investors Gain.’”

So whether stocks go up or down, smile, for goodness sake. Don’t yawn.