Buy Stocks? No Way!

"Wild horses couldn't drag me back into stocks. Rather than gamble in this market, I might as well go to Las Vegas." So says Curtis Beusman, owner of a sports-medicine clinic in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and he is not talking theory. During the past several years, Beusman has dumped $300,000 worth of stock, more than 80% of his holdings. He is far from alone. Eleven months after last year's crash, most individual investors are avoiding stocks as if they were poison. Some Wall Street executives fear that many of these investors may be leaving the market for good, to the detriment...