Historically sitting on cash is a terrible decision a majority of the time, it's not even close. Without knowing you, your chance of correctly timing the peak and the bottom of the market is simply abysmal. The market may crash tomorrow, but it probably won't.

Let's say by incredible luck you manage to time both of these events perfectly, then what? There will be other crashes in the future, that's a certainty. And you won't be able to time all of them.

Yes, but [most of the time] historically we also didn't have an all-time high retail participation in markets, highest P/E ever, unprofitable companies skyrocketing to crazy heights, insane speculative mania.

I agree that timing the drop is very difficult, but there is going to be a drop for sure - what has been happening in markets recently is definitely not "the new normal"

One thing to keep in mind is that while there is indeed plenty of speculation, there's also plenty of healthy criticism of the current valuations as well as outright doomsday talk from fairly well known investors.

What this means is that for now the market continues to self correct and we haven't reached peak positive sentiment yet. Historically, massive selloffs happen because of unexpected sudden changes in sentiment (2000, 2008) or due to black swan events (2020). Given that we just went through a black swan and the markets aren't overly optimistic, I wouldn't expect a large crash in the immediate future.

Invest now. Buying the dip is a terrible investment strategy. [0]

[0] https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-buying-the-dip-is-a-terribl...

This is where I am at. Watching savings from a liquidity event get eaten away. At the same time not trusting to dump into a very highly valued market. GLD, Crypto, Land, Oil, Food. Odd thing i have been buying is old steel body trucks, 1990 to 1998 - Single cab, 8' bed. My wife is not happy with this, but i see it as a great way to park 5 to 30k in a physically investment. Problem is, I don't want to store 100-300 of these.

Anybody have any other ideas?

Change your thinking: instead of targeting the largest gain, try going for the smallest loss. Take into consideration that anything you think will happen, you may be wrong. Thus, there is only one solution: diversify. Some stock, some ETFs, some real estate and keep some cash.

But what do I know?!

Good point. I recently got (for me) a lot of long term financed debt at a low fixed rate. Also buying tax liens for the first time. Just looking for items outside of the "" System.

Take a look at some conservative designed portfolios, eg. the Ivy Portfolio, the Allweather portfolio, cockroach, etc.

Many are designed to have smaller swings up/down. While they may miss booms and spikes, they draw down less during volatile markets and downturns.

I dont use it but many on internet (and coworkers) use M1 - you can just set a target ratio and the service will auto rebalance for you.

>old steel body trucks, 1990 to 1998

Is that an asset that will hold value? Rust never sleeps.

Lot of people want old trucks now as many are used for work vehicles/beaten to death, the really premium examples appreciate more. I live in a dry climate so I dont have to worry about rust, really just UV damage. Problem is I dont really want to own a field of trucks, just looking for hedges.

Why so bearish?

I struggle with being too bearish. But I am right every once and a while.... which really is all it takes to self reinforce the idea. I feel something is off is all. Companies and what make to what they are valued i just don't see as realistic right now. If you run a M+A value on almost any company in the market for instance and you had all the money in the world you would not get a good deal right now. I also think that's why WB/BH is sitting on 130+billion in cash and getting killed by inflation, they would rather take that hit than accept the risk of a bad investment.

Because every market has doubled in value since march 2020?

Even worse, prices have doubled but dividends have remained about the same (that is, yields have decreased).

That's bearish? I'm being somewhat obtuse, but this bull market is not over yet.

AFAIK, historically it has always ended up better to remain invested in the market. People have been predicting a catastrophe for so long now that it's hard to take them that seriously, I just assume they are missing some important detail which explains why they are always wrong. So I keep everything but my emergency fund invested, and avert my eyes from the news stories proclaiming the end is nigh. Worst case, I end up working longer than I'd like -- unless the world really does collapse, I have marketable skills that should at least pay subsistence money.

It's better if you are OK waiting 15 years to get back to where you were if a major crash is immanent.

Or a Japan situation where it took 30 years, thanks to stagflation, which we have all the ingredients for right now.

Japan has been experiencing deflation, not stagnation, for the last couple decades. Of the two, stagflation is decidedly better because you can protect yourself from it through diversification.

Deflation just means hoard cash and hope you outperform literally every asset.

>AFAIK, historically it has always ended up better to remain invested in the market.

It always has. Historically everything goes up. What everybody forgets in this scenario is what if a sizeable chunk of your liquid assets are tied up in investments during a crash and you're 5-10 years to retirement? You're seriously going to wait another 10 years for the market to correct itself to then cash out so you don't lose any money? No you might even be dead before you even have the chance to use it.

There are alternatives (mostly diversification). Eg. Bonds won't lose value when stocks do typically, and def by lower swings. But if you're really close to retirement, it may be good to hold cash - only if you actually think cash is the right way to store wealth in retirement, which may not be best.

We see a lot of retail investors being fomo’d (by media, by peers, and forum threads like this) into dumping cash into stocks, like everyone else. That will likely not end well. Cash is a call option on opportunity.