Operative word being moment. The volatility is irrelevant if you wait it out long enough, hence "long term". If you need a shorter term low-risk investment vehicle, that's what treasury bills/notes are for.

> watch it all decay away thanks to our inherently inflationary regime

Any alternative investment strategy is equally affected by inflation.

It’s a very different calculus when nominal bonds are paying 5% and TIPS are paying 2.6% above inflation.

The nowhere to go but the stocks holds more water when the ten year was paying 0.55%.

2.6% above CPI. Investor calculus should include a consideration of how CPI is set vs what their actual personal rate of inflation will be.

If you think it will go up just more slowly well that’s hardly all that bad?

Google the ticker and compare to VTI then get back to me. And that’s without even mentioning gold.

May be worth it for diversification, but you’d be very lucky if it outperformed the next 10 years.

What if you zoom out to say, 5 years, 10 years?

Or are you predicting that from here on out, VEA will outperform say, the S&P500 and the NASDAQ?

I don’t know if you’ve seen the recent news in the US but things are going downhill very quickly. I don’t expect us to stay out of a recession for long once our government collapses into a dictatorship.

A country could be a brutal dictatorship and still be a great place to grow your wealth. Investors aren’t going to willingly make themselves poorer just because Americans are in a private hell of their own making.

America is still the world’s top consumer. People are broke because they literally consume too much. Debt slaves will make you RICH.

In fact you win even more if you feel like stocks are bubbly and wait in say gold or short term and you buy more stocks when they are cheap

Also US stocks have underperformed compared to EU when you take all factors into account and all US stocks have rather been focused on AI hype which once again is a bubble which will fundamentally break the US economy.

It's like saying 2008 crisis still made you money long term

Sure if you are 20 years deep and even then nobody could've predicted what happened. The sentiments were extremely low

I am one of the biggest index funds advisors usually and that's when I read finance books and wanted to go into finance but genuinely felt like index funds are just so great that the need is very low

In fact I must admit that I dislike saying Gold but its genuinely one of the best assets (although it may be overvalued now not sure), another investment is specifically globalize your index fund portfolio to extreme/exclude US. In fact if possible bet on index funds on the opposite side of AI which most likely feels gold and yes, I am a little sad about this fact but rules of the game changes at points of extremes so gold is valid option right now

but they are unlikely to be cheaper in the future than they are right now (https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/advisor-resources/inte...).

so if you have the money but defer buying them, you lose out on the time value of money.

I invest in Index funds for peace of mind as well. That the market remains reasonably happy/sad and I can be for the long run.

People discount this fact but imagine your concerns if you feel like 25% of your savings just evaporated because a guy ten layers detached from you burnt all the money on AI compute and there is no moat (Ahem ahem)

If you don't want peace of mind, people should angel invest or build their own side hustles but then you are getting some savings anyway and its better to invest than keep it in banks (once you have a safe amount saved)

But if you are saving money and still facing 25% crisis. Yeah...

I understand where you are coming from but if you can expect a 50-75% dip in market this time (some companies are 2-5x overvalued just because they slap AI, their P/E ratio's straight up just don't make any sense at all!)

So if you are willing to consider such dip for unforseen amount of time for unforseen returns in future when you can get a pretty safe investment for X amount of years being very liquid and historically in such times there are times when bond prices have been larger than stock prices

If I remember correctly, Intelligent Investors suggests an intelligent approach towards this (in one of the starting chapters of the book)

Does that change the basic logic and strategy? I don't think so, given that it isn't possible to predict WHEN the market will drop, by HOW MUCH, and for HOW LONG.

There is no free lunch, people who argue that S&P 500 historical returns and the over concentration into tech stocks has more risk than people believe leading to thinking of free profit

I would still call it a foolish errands if you are unable to keep your calm and composure if american stocks can fall 50% - 75%

If you are okay with that and then sticking your profits for 10 years or so afterwards to then get your money equal then sure

People forget that japan's markets got into a stand still for 30 years to make net profit. Researching about japanese documentaries pre and after that time can just show you the devastation

I personally recommend investing into world index funds if possible. Its your savings not your gambling money. Even 25% is devastating.

Even John bogle says that the difference between S&P (US) and international is minimal giving fairly similar but he was more nationalistic but seeing the current geopolitical and economical blunders by america, I wouldn't be surprised if he might change his stance

Rest in peace John Bogle, you will be missed.

Especially when you realize on aggregate, Companies long term have to reflect profit and less P/E otherwise if your stock index fund has larger P/E ratio, then you are absolutely taking on higher risk

There is no free lunch.

You are also forgetting that the reason the extrapolation of stock markets growth from historical data correlates to future data is that there is a benchmark of productivity underneath it all. Stock markets theoretically grows when productivity of all businesses in an economy improve which can improve due to scientific and economic reasons and the faith in the system that it does improve

Quite frankly, if you can't observe this, do not invest in index funds but rather something else which can reflect some amount of productivity (Short term bonds are needed by govt to improve life of the people so that they can pay more taxes in aggregate and improve conditions thus improving productivity as well)

I recommend the book Intelligent Investing and The little book of common sense investing by the legendary John Bogle (May he rest in peace)