My retirement fund that I just started was worth $15k in December of 2021. Then, May of 2022, our area was hit really hard. My retirement plan went down to $7k. Today, it’s worth $11k. I lost $4k on my retirement plan. It’s invested in total market funds, some tech, some big cap companies, and healthcare. But every sector has been ravaged by the stock market changes.
This is the actual problem with these types of retirement plans, though. People are expected to know a lot about managing the investments themselves. There’s a whole industry whose job it is to give you bad advice. The real advice is “drop it in a mix of an sp500 index fund it and bonds according to your risk level” and the rest is bullshit.