Yes. That's where my RIA has 33% of my assets now, we moved them in 2019. We will be "piecing back into" the market over the next 12 months. I'm 50 and have a 30 year investment horizon. I've been investing since I was 21. I've been through two massive drops in the market that took years to recover. Don't panic. Valuations will correct themselves and fundamentals will continue to hold until the next bubble. I think that is model we're facing at the upper limit of an exponential.
> Is this all gonna crumble like a Ponzi scheme?
It has to stay alive so that the rich can get richer. Remember the players in the Panama Papers? There's an entire society that runs the planet. And this isn't a conspiracy, it's out in the open! Look at the Carlyle Group: it is an investing firm funded by people liek MBS (The Saudi), the Clintons, the Bushes, and many other politically-culturally diametrically opposed clients. It's no mystery that rich world leaders who go to war with each other give their money to the same investors.
You know that there are investments only available to people with $5, $10, or $100 million more in holdings? There are entire class of investment devices that you and I will never see. It takes tens of millions to even play in hedge funds. The "real" markets are for the 0.1%. Those will continue to feed off the other markets, which they need to distance themselves from the pack. (Look at wealth distribution over the past 50 years.) But these top tier funds require us schlubs to hand them money while we scrape by with 5-8% yearly returns. They will keep the dials set just right so that we'll have a reasonable retirement while they own the planet (Larry Ellison owns a Hawaiian island. Techbros are buying up New Zealand [Theil]. Think about what happens when trillionaires start to buy entire countries.
Yeah, the market will survive and make sure the upper middle class continues to invest, otherwise there won't be a wealth generating machine for the 0.1-0.01%. As for people who can't afford to even put money in a 401k? Well, we know what one political party things about those people.
That's a bummer - you missed out on the rally and pricing is about the same as what it was in 2019.
At a certain point, we should just admit that we're taking money from the middle class and using it to play-act private investment while actually socializing investment. We should then go the full distance and actually socialize most of the economy, so that twice a month people are compensated not with abstract, speculative 401(k) prospectuses, but with an equal vote and a dividend in their own workplace.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/sweden-social-democracy-m...
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08969205134853...
What else should it be backed with? Dollars are subject to (hyper)inflation. Real estate is nice, but I need more liquidity.
Seems like owning a chunk of the economy is where the action is.
Honest question about FIRE: you hear stories about people retiring and dying a few years later in part because they lost their purpose in life, or people nearing 65 asking themselves "what am I going to do with my time." Purpose in life is strongly tied to emotional well being. What's FIRE's answer to that? Retirement is not an end unto itself.
I do wonder and am concerned what the endgame is. Is this all gonna crumble like a Ponzi scheme? Is it just gonna smooth off as more investors start retiring and pulling money out? Maybe at that point this will all just turn into a fairly indirect redistribution from working, young people to current retirees, as we see in some national pension systems?
One thing is for sure, the stock market reflecting on people's near- to mid-term outlook of the economy is likely over.