I have been 'raising cash' by selling stuff in my portfolio that seems high risk and is up. I've learned from the past that I end up feeling physically unwell when the portfolio sinks and stays low for a year, some days 1-5% which make me stop looking. Now I'm reducing my risk exposure - yes, that means not literally 'cash' but either a money market fund and a tax-free bond fund. For years I had a lot of gold miners and a gold mining index which only recently popped, I thought that was a 'hedge' but now I am convinced the only hedge is cash or if you know what you are doing, options. Everything is prone to pops and crashes, from big giant index funds, to gold, to bitcoin, to large caps, all the stuff people said was supposed to be a hedge.

For this round I've bought (well, bought and sold, and now waiting to buy via an order) puts on a semiconductor ETF. Since I own some of the stocks, if it goes sky high still I win, if it crashes I win, and if nothing happens I'll have to sell it 30 days before it expires to avoid the theta decay, which starts to really bite in that last month.

No one knows anything - which is the environment I'm learning to operate it.

A very conservative investor, say a boglehead or a 'value investor' would tell you to buy in an index fund and not look, unless you know for sure what you are doing and have done insane research on a company and it's priced low. They would say, buy VTI or VOO if you don't need the money within 5 years, and stop looking at it. Oh, and DCA into it versus all at once.