While negative returns are part and parcel of investing, it happens less often than you think. The past four years are actually very representative of how markets work in general — positive returns 75% of the time, and losses, 1 out of 4 times.

An old joke goes - a statistician is a person who lays with his head in an oven and his feet in a freezer happily proclaiming “On average, I feel comfortable.”

Taking that example into the investment world, averages seldom reflect actual investor experience.