This is financial wisdom at its finest. Cooler heads prevail, and the only real way to lose historically is to panic sell. This too shall pass… HOLD
To be clear, I don't assert that maintaining relative wealth is the sole concern of an investor. There are others. But I think it's the most important aspect of sudden downturns provided that you still believe in the long term real growth of the productive capacity of the economy you're invested in. Also, if you don't believe in that, then the only practical alternative I'm aware of is to invest in an economy you believe in more, or to invest in a slice of the overall economy you think is more likely to grow. Failing that, there simply aren't any good options.
No, that's obviously false. How could I believe that? I am observing that Japan's economy has had very little real growth over the 30 year period referenced by my parent commenter, and that that is the primary problem for investors over there. (The real GDP of the United States as measured by the Federal Reserve bank increased by 33% from 2010 to 2020 immediately before the pandemic, see: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1.)
> How many decades do you think it takes for USA to triple its productivity for real, so that it catches up to the stock market? That is how many decades the crash could set you back if this really is such a bubble.
I think there are a bunch of assumptions here about how asset prices track the growth of GDP that may not be correct. But, the way I model it, it doesn't really matter if my absolute assets recover to a particular nominal dollar amount after a crash. What I'm mainly concerned about is that my share of the productive capacity of the US economy doesn't decrease, and that that economy as a whole (particularly the portion represented by publicly traded companies) continues to grow. As long as those two conditions are satisfied, I'm not terribly concerned about the dollar amount assigned to my portfolio.
What I'm chiefly concerned about is the amount of real consumption that my investments and labor entitle me to. And I believe that the best way to think about my investments in this context is the fraction of real production in the country that they represent, times the total amount of real production.
But that can still result in negative returns on your investments, it protects you from losing everything but it doesn't protect you from losing a lot.
Negative nominal returns, especially in the short term, yes. I don't dispute it, and if I said anything in the thread to suggest otherwise, I apologize. I'm concerned about long term real returns, in terms of something like purchasing power parity.
Or the folks who held S&P 500 in the 2000s. But the lesson is simple: diversify.
A 60/40 Japan equities/bonds portfolio would have ben fine:
* https://gfmasset.com/2020/01/60-40-has-worked-well-even-in-j...
Same as for the S&P 500:
> Yes, the data does show that 2000-2009 was a lost decade for the S&P 500. Passive investing has been unfairly attacked in response to this data, however, because of a misperception of what a proper passive investing strategy is.
> Passive investing does not mean one should buy-and-forget, but rather that one should limit trading to periodic portfolio rebalancing. Those who proactively rebalanced their portfolios actually profited, even when investing in funds that tracked that S&P 500.
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2010/12/17/the-lost-de...
these days 60/40 is considered pretty conservative. in this environment holding to bonds means you're losing out to inflation.
2. While they may dampen returns (but also dips), one has to examine how much risk is actually needed to meet financial goals. Sure, more money is generally better, but not necessarily at the cost of other factors.