if you buy a broadly diversified index, if the market goes up, you are better off than you were; there is no justification in not participating in that. your i

if you buy a broadly diversified index, if the market goes up, you are better off than you were; there is no justification in not participating in that. your investment going down means the whole economy went down: you are no worse off than the aggregate, and you still own your piece of the economy. if the whole economy goes down a lot, the widespread largescale unemployment means you are a lot better off than a lot of people, and you still own your segment of the economy. it's more of an opportunity cost type thing: you can't afford not to be fully invested. In general, the economy grows, you want to grow with it. nobody can predict downturns; anybody who can is busily correcting the market to make money from it; in any case, that's not us, so we do what we can do.