Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited.

Should I continue to invest in an S&P 500 index fund?
5-8 years is not quite long term.  Until the naughts (the 2001-10 decade), advisors were known to say that the S&P was always positive given a 10 year holding period. Now, we're saying 15 years is always positive looking back.  One can easily pull S&P return data which would let you run numbers showing the range of returns for the 5-8 yr period you have in mind. A bit of extra effort and you can include the dollar cost averaging factor.  This wouldn't produce a guarantee, but a statistical range of expected returns over your time horizon. Then a decision like "with a 1/4 chance of losing 25% of my money, should I stay with this plan?" This is just an example. The numbers for 1900-2014 look like this -  In any 5 year period, an average return of 69.2% (note 1.69 means a 69% gain). Of the 111 5 year periods, 14 were negative with the worst being a 46% loss. I maintain 5 years is not really long term, but the risk is relatively low of being in the red.