The employer selects a financial company to manage the 401k. When you switch jobs, you can roll the 401k from the previous employer into the new one, or into an IRA (Individual Retirement Account).

Usually the financial services company will offer several options: more aggressive/high risk, or less aggressive/lower risk. Most people will just go with whatever is the default option.

So much of the American S&P 500 is dominated by handful of companies that the risk is not that easy to avoid. If or when the AI bubble pops, it's going to take down a lot of the economy with it. You can direct your retirement savings into the lowest yield/lowest risk assets offered by the firm, but you'll forego whatever growth happens in the mean time.

Will the bubble pop next week? Next month? Next year? Who knows. Timing the market is incredibly difficult.

There's a famous quote, attributed (perhaps apocryphally) to John Maynard Keynes: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

The whole idea of a pension fund is that you don't need to time the system it is the system.

Like my country pension scheme. It went through ups and downs for a hundred years but has always come on top. All you need is a long horizon and a trillion dollars and you basically can't lose.