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If your New Year's Resolution was, "I am going to prepare for retirement by moving my savings into stocks," then you must be very sad now.

Broncos-fan-level sad.

On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged another 326 points, down about 2 percent to 15,373. That was the seventh triple-digit drop so far this year. Back on Dec. 31, the Dow was at 16,577.

And the day was even worse for the S&P 500, which lopped off another 2.3 percent to slump to 1742. As recently as Jan. 15, that stock index was at 1848.38.

In other words, your stock portfolio has been getting killed so far this year. Experts have been tossing out lots of explanations. Among the ones cited often are:

Fund managers' decisions to sell shares to lock in profits after last year's big gains.

Worries about slowing growth in emerging market.

Possible changes in the Federal Reserve's plans for interest rates.

Weakening U.S. corporate profits.

Slowing auto sales.

Weaker-than-expected growth in manufacturing.

So where do we go from here? Predictions are all over the place.

Some analysts think this is just a short-term pull back. They say the market is headed for a fairly typical "correction," a period when the market may drop 10 percent before investors start plowing money back into the market.

This slump could be seen as a "healthy" pullback, coming early in the year and allowing mutual funds to lock in profits from 2013's huge gains. Once stock prices are back down to lower, more attractive levels, the investors will come back, so the argument goes.

Optimists point out that both December and January were unusually cold, so that might have slowed auto sales, construction and retail sales. When the weather warms, the economy and the stock market will snap back, they believe.

But pessimists are worried. They fear interest rates will be heading higher, China will keep slowing and conditions will not be as favorable to corporate profits. Currency problems will keep hurting emerging markets and Europe will slow again, they argue.

For years, makers of kids' cereals have been upping the ante to get kids interested: hiding a toy surprise inside, adding multicolored marshmallows, setting bear traps in the cereal aisle. Now Post, makers of the classic Flintstones-themed Fruity Pebbles, have created "Poppin' Pebbles," an explosive Pop Rocks-Cereal mashup.

Miles: This is the only cereal on the market that fizzes and foams in your mouth. Well, this and Cinnamon Rabies Crunch.

Ian: The Flintstones weren't entirely unhealthy people. When you think about it, their car was basically like an early treadmill desk.

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Just as Janet L. Yellen was sworn in as the first woman to head the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke announced his next move on Monday.

The former fed chief, who saw the country through a recovery from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, will join Brookings' Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy.

The Washington-based think tank says in a press release:

"In the past few years, Mr. Bernanke has been presiding over an historic experiment in monetary policy — more than five years of zero interest rates (so far) and trillions of dollars in bond-buying, a controversial approach aimed at restoring growth to the American economy.

"Ben Bernanke won't have to sit through any more meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee or deliver the Fed's semi-annual testimony to an occasionally hostile Congress or listen to complaints from emerging-market central bankers when central bankers gather in Basel, Switzerland. He won't have to check the computer screen to see what's been happening in Asian markets when he gets up every morning.

"He will, instead, have time to reflect on what just happened. ' I was kind of like if you're in a car wreck. You're mostly involved in trying to avoid going off the bridge. And then later on you say, "Oh, my God," ' he said here recently."

If you are buying health coverage in the Colorado ski resort towns, the Connecticut suburbs of New York City or a bunch of otherwise low-cost rural regions of Georgia, Mississippi and Nevada, you have the misfortune of living in the most expensive insurance marketplaces under the new health law.

The 10 most expensive regions also include all of Alaska and Vermont and large parts of Wisconsin and Wyoming. The ranking is based on the lowest price "silver" plan, which is the mid-level plan that the majority of consumers are choosing.

These regions, created as part of the health law, range in size from a state to a single county. While many people in these places will receive government subsidies to help pay for premiums, the portion that they pay will still be higher than they would have to foot in many other places.

The cause of the stratospheric premiums varies from region to region, although a recurring theme is that in some areas the limited number of hospitals and specialists allows them to demand high prices from insurers.

In southwestern Georgia, one hospital system dominates the area and beat back an effort by federal antitrust regulators to loosen its grip on the market. High individual insurance rates also reflect the extra costs that come when locals tend to be in poor health and where large numbers of people lack employer-sponsored insurance, leaving providers with more charity cases and lower-reimbursed Medicare patients.

A sicker population doesn't explain the most expensive region in the country: four mountain counties around Aspen and Vail. People here are generally healthy, but medical prices and the use of medical services are both high.

Shots - Health News

High Insurance Rates Anger Some Ski-Country Coloradans