I moved 80% of my money out of Vanguard's Target Date Retirement funds and into a money market on June 1st. In the 1.5 months since, the remaining Target Date Retirement fund has fluctuated up and down by about 0.1%. It has basically plateaued. I don't think I am losing out on potential short term gains. I like the idea that I have cash available to buy in on the day of the crash.

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?