losing huge amounts of money is going to happen. there's nothing you can do to avoid it, other than not invest in stocks. the tradeoff is that it always comes back higher.
being risk averse will actually cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long term. research cFIRESim and plug the numbers in yourself: the portfolios most likely to survive long retirements with money left are those with higher stock %s (i'm talking 90% plus).
you can't get enough growth with materially high bond %s to survive long periods of withdrawing. satisfying your risk averse reptile brain will actually generally lead to you drawing 100% of your savings down, which isn't great if you aren't earning via something else.
if you are interested in material long term growth, e.g. enough to outpace inflation, you have to accept the fact that you will lose enormous amounts of cash virtually overnight. your other options are to lose your wealth due to inflation/aversion to risk. it's regrettable, but that's the situation we are in with targeted 2%+ inflation.
best of luck!
Easier to stay invested. That way you’re fully in whenever the bottom comes.
this is no different. you have to factor in potential lost growth when you go risk averse mode; it's against our loss aversion bias but has to be done when thinking long term.