So late last year after about 3 attempted rallies, around one of those local peaks I decided enough is enough and I basically liquidated everything so now I'm 1

So late last year after about 3 attempted rallies, around one of those local peaks I decided enough is enough and I basically liquidated everything so now I'm 100% cash. This was all before the coronavirus. My rationale for this was simply that we were in the longest bull market in modern history, we were likely closer to the top than the bottom and because of certain FIRE tendencies [1] I decided my time horizon had shrunk to less than 5 years, at which point I decided it was more prudent to get out of equities. For the last several years I wondered what triggered the eventual correction. By "correction" I mean there'll eventually be a reversion to mean that will, for a time, cause the market to be oversold. Traditionally this is a good time to buy but it can be hard to get anywhere near the local bottom (this is where the term "dead cat bounce" originates). I didn't think it would be anything like 2000. We have some tech giants around $1T market caps now but they are money generating machines the likes of which probably hasn't been seen since the era of Standard Oil and the rail barons (whereas 2000 was purely speculative). It didn't seem like real estate would be the trigger either. I thought it might be the possibility of a trade war with China but, on further inspection, it seems China may well be more vulnerable to that than the US. Still, China has a way of thinking long term that's simply nonexistent in US politics. Certainly when I heard about this new virus, I didn't think it would be it. AFter all, we'd had SARS. But SARS was in some ways too effective and it basically burned out really quickly so never threatened a pandemic. But this? The problem here isn't the disease. After all, for most people, it'll likely just be a bad flu. The problem is the changing behaviour it will cause because there seems to be such a long period of being contagious while asymptomatic while being highly contagious. Some airlines are down 40%+ this year. Some cruise lines are even worse off than that. With travel being impacted, so are hotels, restaurants, tourism, etc. Any large public gatherings are likely to be curtailed (either officially or just effectively as people stay away). As soon as I saw there were cases in California where the source couldn't be identified I thought "well that's game over for containment". The same with the Italian cases. Oil prices have plummeted due to lower demand so all oil-dependent economies are now at risk of recession. The Fed's attempt last week to jump start the economy with a surprise 0.5% rate cut basically did nothing and there's only so low rates can go. So best case I think we're in for a bad 6 months, maybe as much as 18-24 months. Personally I'm disappointed I didn't end up shorting the market in the last week, I honestly don't really know why I didn't. But it could be worse. It'll be interesting to see how the anti-vaxxers spin this as it unfolds. What I do know is that it's way too early to go bargain hunting on the stockmarket. [1]: https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/what-is-the-fire-movement https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/what-is-the-fire-movement