Good advice. Ironically most long term folks that just buy low cost index funds and take a nap outperform most of the market stressing out daily on their next move. That’s the cruel reality of investing.

When you factor in the opportunity cost of all that stress and managing an active portfolio the percentage of successful active portfolio managers likely falls down to single digits.

Invest early, invest consistently and often in up or down markets, and the math says you will do very well.

> always win

That's not true. It's only been true on American stock markets, and we only have ~100 years of data.

Many other major stock markets in the world have had ~20 year periods where you would have been better off with your money in bonds than in stocks.

I think the average world stock market is a much better predictor of American stock markets over the next 100 years than past performance of American stock markets. The last 100 years have been exceptional for America vs the world -- it seems very likely that the next 100 years won't be.

The most extreme example is Germany 1914. If you would have invested in the German stock market in 1914 it would have taken you 100 years to break even. I'm not saying that American stock markets will be that bad, but it's an example that disproves the thesis that long term stock markets always win.

You do, your children will live. Or, if you don't have children, your non-profit does not.

I wish people would stop using this "we all die" slogan when it comes to their financial lives, and think a bit about the people who will be left after you retire.

Holding cash is a terrible strategy, the US dollar is going to get devalued by the end of the Orange Troll's term due to money printing/bond market repression/trade hijinks.

We're in the pump of a pump and dump by the richest people in the world, who are trying to engineer exit liquidity in a way that doesn't immediately crash the market. They're going to cycle their holdings several times before things go to shit to avoid the brunt of it, we'll be able to see the wave on the horizon. I don't think just the SpaceX dumping will trigger a broader loss of confidence, but Anthropic + OpenAI dumping post IPO will ripple through to the neoclouds, which will ripple through to the semis, and probably tank things. In the short term (pre AI IPO) the market is volatile but pretty safe IMO, so just trade techically.

In the medium-long term I'd hold a mix of mining/industrial equipment/etc stocks in Euros, and Chinese AI/renewables stocks in Renminbi. The Euro stocks are safer and a significant portion of their increased valuation will come from currency shifts, and the Chinese stocks are riskier but have a big upside and are likely to benefit from Renminbi revaluation as China onshores "finishing"/final assembly of products (which much of the world is going to push them to do).

Instead of cash, I like debt like mortgage funds. High single-digit returns with low volatility.

If short term is high volatility and the medium term is too unstable, why is the VIX as low as it is? Am I missing something, or is the VIX mispriced?