Living with losses. (Investments & Finance).

ONCE the stock market has finally bottomed out, investors won't be finished wrestling with the bears.

Next will come the daunting question of how fast and how strong a comeback might be. Most commentaries on this subject to date have been glum.

"A rapid revival of stocks is unlikely," says economist Gary Shilling on the Web site of his A. Gary Shilling & Co. "It may take 10 to 20 years to regain the 2000 stock peaks."

"Markets tend to go down faster than they go up," says John Makin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, in a just-published report entitled 'After Irrational Exuberance."

Of course nobody can see the future. Thinking like good contrarians, we can view rampant wariness as a positive sign, given the market's legendary penchant for doing what everybody least expects. On the other hand, we cannot claim to know yet that the bear market that began in 2000 has run its course.

"Stocks stink and will continue to do so until they're priced appropriately, probably somewhere around Dow 5,000," declared Bill Gross, the celebrated bond manager who runs the $61 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, last week.

The last bear market of comparable length and severity hit bottom in December 1974. In the on again, off-again recovery that followed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average failed to break out to decisive new highs until 1982.

In the current bear market investors didn't start pulling money out of stock mutual funds in earnest until June of this year. If past patterns hold, a "waiting to get out even" mentality could persist in funds for years to come. After 1973-74 redemptions in stock funds exceeded sales of new shares to investors in four of the next five years.

Dividends are often cited as a prospective rallying point for today's investors, a tangible means of restoring confidence at a time when reported earnings numbers command little trust. After a decade in which companies had almost no incentive to start or increase their dividend payouts, this looks like a pretty slender bulwark. The dividend yield of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index stands at a meager 1.74 percent. The only two ways to raise that number are via higher dividends - not the easiest thing to conjure up coming out of a recession - or lower stock prices.

A proposed move to take the U.S. tax system's shackles off dividends would be a big help--especially the "double taxation" when money is earned, by a business, and again when it is paid out to shareholders. Nothing is likely to happen, though, as long as opponents in Congress keep dismissing the idea as a favor to the rich.

A long, laborious recovery looms as a problem for any investor in a hurry. To those who can afford to wait, it might not be such bad news after all.

Suppose you are saving for a retirement 20 or 25 years in, the future, putting money aside each month. Which would: serve you better, a rapid new rise in the market, or a sustained period of sluggishness during which you could buy relatively cheap before the market heats up again?

Think how the bull market of the '80s and '90s rewarded people who invested steadily through the '70s. These investors were few, for sure, given that they got no payoff, financial or emotional, during the early years. In the end, the delay only sweetened the rewards.