> The risk is that you can lose all of your money. It's spelled out in every prospectus... If you buy equity in a single company, you could lose all of your mo

> The risk is that you can lose all of your money. It's spelled out in every prospectus... If you buy equity in a single company, you could lose all of your money if they go bankrupt. Likewise, if you buy stock in 500 companies, they could all go bankrupt and you could lose all of your money, but the chances of that kind of "total loss" happening become astronomically low as your portfolio becomes more and more diversified. So yes, there's technically a chance of losing all of your money even when buying well-diversified index funds, and therefore this risk is listed in all the relevant legal documents. But I'm not losing any sleep over this particular category of risk. > When people give you the impression that there's no downside to a particular investment they don't understand it either. Of course there's a downside; the fundamental property of all investments is that risk is intrinsically proportional to reward. As a somewhat-rewarding investment strategy, it's therefore somewhat-risky. Being "locked out" of your money for a presidential cycle is one of the major downsides that we've both identified in this strategy.