Last weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on television and said people who wanted to retire right now were not paying attention to the stock market.

On the NBC program “Meet the Press,” referring to those who have “put away for years in their savings account,” he said the following: “I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.”

Is that true? I asked readers of our Your Money newsletter who were on the cusp of retirement whether they were watching the markets and, if so, why?

About 400 people replied. More than 90 percent of them said they were looking. They gave me an earful.

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“I have Parkinson’s disease and am unable to work in any capacity. Naturally, I closely watch how the market performs on a daily basis.”
— Nancy London, Plain City, Ohio