This is what you get paid for. Volatility. Stomach-churning drops. Watching your paper wealth evaporate. Stock market profits aren’t free. Garbage collectors (at least, in nonunion towns) know they have to turn up in the morning and pick up people’s trash in order to get paid. Piano teachers know they have to teach piano to pay the rent. Shop keepers have to tend to a shop. Only investors in the stock market expect to be like the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin. Could Wall Street just send us the checks every month please? The reality is that investors have to earn their money, through brains and nerves. The brains can mean doing smart things – like buying Apple when it started to turn around. More often, they simply are doing dumb things, like buying Pets.com. The nerves mean not panicking or getting swayed by fear, at the bottom, or greed, at the top.
–The Wall Street Journal Online