Right now there are people that think "I can't keep my money in the bank without it loosing money, let alone keep up with inflation, what am I supposed to do put it under a mattress!?"
It will be quite a while before people become corporate bond investors as commonplace (which would put money back into the economy).
In Switzerland, for example as a nation of savers, the corporate bond market has basically dried up. Because even higher risking bonds have too low yields to be attractive for the risk. (Although the Swiss National Bank hasn't prompted bank savings account interest rates to go negative.. yet).
I'm curious to know what this means. You can only get "burned" in index funds if you pull your money out when the market is down. Are you investing money you need to pay the bills?
Just means your risk profile is too low. As detailed earlier, the central banks literally don't want you to do the things you were considering doing. Their distortions of the market are not arbitrary.
They want you to make private equity investments (the ones that don't come with hundreds of pages of disclosures), they want you to buy corporate bonds.
They want you to do things that actually put money back into the economy, and give a potentially higher return with a higher risk of loss.
The line between investing and gambling has always been a social construct. You hop into derivatives and even the "positive vs negative expected value" distinction falls apart.
There lies the problem. Real investments aren't made, unless pushing the price of housing stock to extract more from renters and to-be homeowners, as well as stock buybacks in large corporations, are the "real investments" central banks are preferring.