Absolutely 100% agree.

At the same time, one can make financial decisions based on risk rather than longterm expected returns.

For instance, I'm happy with fixed income yields rn.

What would scare me is losing a big chunk of my portfolio in a downturn, exactly when I'm also most likely to lose my job.

Sometimes conventional wisdom stops being wise. Also 90% of the people in charge of conventional wisdom have their personal wealth depend on retail investors not selling.

Honest question: Do you expect the AI crash to have a bigger impact on the economy than a global pandemic that shut everything down did?

Good luck dude! This kind of move can pay off big or not, clearly. I’ve personally talked to fable about this a lot, suggest everyone does.

There are a lot of failure modes. The dot-com bubble looked obvious in 1997; it popped in 2000. Anyone shorting in '97-'98 was carried out on a stretcher before being vindicated. In fact 2000-2002 fell in three brutal legs over two years, and anyone who leveraged up after the first 25% leg was destroyed by the next two.

My boss has already done this several times over the past couple years because of some impeding market crash. Then he goes back and buys a week or so later.

> I moved 80% of my money out of Vanguard's Target Date Retirement funds

which target date fund exactly? You can increase risk/reward buy choosing a target date fund far in the future or you can reduce risk/reward by choosing a target date fund closer to the present. The point of those funds is to gradually reduce your risk as you get closer to your planned retirement date. I moved my 401k into a target date fund about +10 years from my planned retirement (I'm 50). So a little bit on the risk++ side but not much.

what if you buy on the day of the crash only to discover that was day one of a year long crash?

Retail investors do not have access to systems that calculate risk, margins, pnl, etc... and generally also don't have the necessary knowledge and market data to price such instruments correctly.

Most ppl are better off KISSing and lowering risk by selling equity for fixed income.

You almost always lose a lot of money if you're seeking safety. Protection from downside risk on your S&P500 investments may cost 20-30% of your investment at which point you're better off just selling the investment and hoping it doesn't go up by that much.

It’s scaremongering, you can learn all this stuff.

However! If you don’t want to learn and want to get rich quick instead, stay away.

Not the parent but I'm guessing: a) it's expensive and b) you can shoot your feet off.

It's all about getting a call from the dreaded Margin.