First, make sure you’re not 100% equity. You clearly don’t have the stomach for what that would do in a downturn. 60-40 equity-bond is an old standby for a cons

First, make sure you’re not 100% equity. You clearly don’t have the stomach for what that would do in a downturn. 60-40 equity-bond is an old standby for a conservative portfolio (I don’t recommend that allocation, though). Then, head over to portfoliocharts.com and play with some of the portfolios and asset allocations to get a sense of how they change historical results. For a conservative portfolio, I like the All Seasons/All Weather, and the Golden Butterfly is an interesting modification of the Permanent Portfolio another poster mentioned. But don’t just blindly follow them, use them as a jumping off point to learn more about the asset classes. Bogleheads.org is a nice forum for learning more about index investing. Good luck, and happy to expand on anything.