How I view the market:

Short term: high volatility and uncertainty, feels more like gambling at a casino

Medium term: the world is too unstable, best to hold cash

Long term: dollar cost averaging and time in the market always win so depending how long your horizon is, it’s a good time as any to invest

Longer term: we all die

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cmiles8 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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sph 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Though I keep wondering if the ‘invest consistently whether the market goes up or down’ defeats the point of a stock market in the first place.

People effectively keep throwing money at mediocre or failing endeavours, which magnifies any structural problem, and everything seems to keep going up whether it’s good news or bad news, until the bottom falls out.

My reading might be wrong, but since 2020 there is no bad news that seems to faze the market by an iota.

	▲	pfortuny 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Well, that is what markets do: behave. Rationally or not. The 1929 panic was also irrational but it happened. There is no way to solve that. Panics happen and bubbles too, and in the meantime, very long term investments tend to grow (in average), as long as the economy works as expected (improving in average, long-term). Of course, catastrophes are not impossible (the Black Death, the French Revolution, World Wars...).
	▲	blitzar 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Always bet on black at the roulette table, over and over and over again.

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WJW 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's almost the inverse of a cruel reality? Just stick it all in low cost index funds and go to the beach. You'll do as good or better than 99% of actively invested funds. That's not cruel at all, that's actually a pretty comfy reality.

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abc123abc123 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I hate that having children is apparently the only purpose anyone has in life because I don't have children or a purpose in life and I'm pretty sure I would be even more depressed if I had children.

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abc123abc123 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Note that I am not arguing that children is the purpose in life for everyone. For some it is, for others it is not.

I believe that the majority of child bearers are "on program" driven by their biological imperatives. I believe that among the voluntary non-children people (of which I am one) there's plenty of values, goals, hopes and aspirations. In fact, for me, life is so rich that that is why I do not want children.

There's billions of people all over the planet to carry the burden for me. Sure, if we were in an extinction scenario, I might reconsider, but we're far, far from it.

So while I continue to enjoy life and full freedom, I'll let the people who are "on program" deal with the poop and worry for their offspring.

That does not, however, mean I do not have to care about people. If anything, the fact that I do not have children, gives me the opportunity to care _more_ about people in general, than the people who are busy with raising children.

Hence my idea about a non-profit, that will outlast me for some time.

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inigyou 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, I used to feel life was rich too, and then I very suddenly became aware that it was finite and anything I could possibly do is just leading towards the same fixed point ending. I think mentally healthy humans have ways to avoid thinking about this.

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yetihehe 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Find purpose which aligns with "progress or wellbeing of our species". Making kids is one, making inventions is another, helping poor or sweeping roads fits too. If you see that your "way of living" will affect people positively, typically you will have a "good life purpose".

What happens when you have kids? You leave something that will last after your death. Then you make sure that they are properly raised and have enough resources, so that your "mark on the world" is more appreciated by other people. Ultimately all the "good life" have one thing in common. Improving life of our species.

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semiquaver an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, like having kids.

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applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Religion, children, and legacy are the ways people cope with this. For the vast, vast majority of human history, 99% of people believed either in an afterlife or reincarnation or something of the sort. Having children, who were molded in your image and expected to take over your life's work, doing the same work you did. Or otherwise leaving an impact in the world, hoping that your legacy would be remembered and to pass on your teachings and experiences to future generations even if not to your own children.

I think advances in scientific understanding may have unfortunately been detrimental to mental wellbeing at scale. Knowing that there is no higher power or grand purpose, knowing that our civilization is probably cooked in the near term, and knowing that even if our civilization isn't immediately cooked, Earth and eventually the universe is, are all not greatly emotionally satisfying.

	▲	inigyou an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It probably doesn't help that every scientific advance gets co-opted to make the rich richer and civilization worse. I guess the world oscillates between good times and bad times. Those who are born in bad times get to see the world improve drastically and babe purpose. Those who are unlucky enough to be born in good times get to see everything crumble.

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cindyllm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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CuriouslyC an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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).

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nerdralph 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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AnimalMuppet an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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?