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Here’s the thing about stock markets: if you think it’s inflated or there’s a bubble, great, you can pull your money out. But then you look around and try to fi

Here’s the thing about stock markets: if you think it’s inflated or there’s a bubble, great, you can pull your money out. But then you look around and try to figure out a better place to put your money long term, and where does that bring you? Back to the stock market.

Mistletoe 9mo ago
If we judge it by the lost decade after the 2000 tech bubble definitely not back to stocks. A portfolio of things like gold, small cap value, long term treasuries did 10% a year while stocks did like 0% a year for a decade. https://portfoliocharts.com/2021/12/16/three-secret-ingredients-of-the-most-efficient-portfolios/ https://portfoliocharts.com/2021/12/16/three-secret-ingredie...
- deadbabe 9mo ago
  you cannot cherry pick, you must judge stocks over multiple decade long trends.
  - therobots927 9mo ago
    What’s no longer outperforming? Gold?
    - Mistletoe 9mo ago
      Bitcoin just had a down year in 2025 when it was supposed to be the bull year. One of the worst performing assets of 2025. Doing well so far in 2026.
  - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
    Yes but also nobody's absolutely forcing you to keep your money if you feel like stocks are in turbulence In fact you win even more if you feel like stocks are bubbly and wait in say gold or short term and you buy more stocks when they are cheap Also US stocks have underperformed compared to EU when you take all factors into account and all US stocks have rather been focused on AI hype which once again is a bubble which will fundamentally break the US economy. It's like saying 2008 crisis still made you money long term Sure if you are 20 years deep and even then nobody could've predicted what happened. The sentiments were extremely low I am one of the biggest index funds advisors usually and that's when I read finance books and wanted to go into finance but genuinely felt like index funds are just so great that the need is very low In fact I must admit that I dislike saying Gold but its genuinely one of the best assets (although it may be overvalued now not sure), another investment is specifically globalize your index fund portfolio to extreme/exclude US. In fact if possible bet on index funds on the opposite side of AI which most likely feels gold and yes, I am a little sad about this fact but rules of the game changes at points of extremes so gold is valid option right now
    - andsoitis 9mo ago
      > you buy more stocks when they are cheap but they are unlikely to be cheaper in the future than they are right now (https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/advisor-resources/interactive-tools/sp-500-historical-trends https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/advisor-resources/inte...). so if you have the money but defer buying them, you lose out on the time value of money.
      - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
        I understand this but realize that there are dips of almost 25% I invest in Index funds for peace of mind as well. That the market remains reasonably happy/sad and I can be for the long run. People discount this fact but imagine your concerns if you feel like 25% of your savings just evaporated because a guy ten layers detached from you burnt all the money on AI compute and there is no moat (Ahem ahem) If you don't want peace of mind, people should angel invest or build their own side hustles but then you are getting some savings anyway and its better to invest than keep it in banks (once you have a safe amount saved) But if you are saving money and still facing 25% crisis. Yeah... I understand where you are coming from but if you can expect a 50-75% dip in market this time (some companies are 2-5x overvalued just because they slap AI, their P/E ratio's straight up just don't make any sense at all!) So if you are willing to consider such dip for unforseen amount of time for unforseen returns in future when you can get a pretty safe investment for X amount of years being very liquid and historically in such times there are times when bond prices have been larger than stock prices If I remember correctly, Intelligent Investors suggests an intelligent approach towards this (in one of the starting chapters of the book)
        deadbabe 9mo ago
        P/E ratios rarely seem to make sense and yet people have been making money for a long time buying stocks with crazy P/E.
        Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
        Just because people have been making money with stocks with crazy P/E historically doesn't mean that its meant to continue Especially when you realize on aggregate, Companies long term have to reflect profit and less P/E otherwise if your stock index fund has larger P/E ratio, then you are absolutely taking on higher risk There is no free lunch. You are also forgetting that the reason the extrapolation of stock markets growth from historical data correlates to future data is that there is a benchmark of productivity underneath it all. Stock markets theoretically grows when productivity of all businesses in an economy improve which can improve due to scientific and economic reasons and the faith in the system that it does improve Quite frankly, if you can't observe this, do not invest in index funds but rather something else which can reflect some amount of productivity (Short term bonds are needed by govt to improve life of the people so that they can pay more taxes in aggregate and improve conditions thus improving productivity as well) I recommend the book Intelligent Investing and The little book of common sense investing by the legendary John Bogle (May he rest in peace)
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
bee_rider 9mo ago
These days canned food often seems like a good investment
therobots927 9mo ago
You say that like “stock market” = the US stock market. It doesn’t. And the smart money recognized this a couple years ago. You’ve been presented with a false dichotomy.
- deadbabe 9mo ago
  Is there a better stock market than the US stock market?
  - therobots927 9mo ago
    VEA. Look it up. Europe, Hong Kong, etc have been outperforming the US for over a year now. Google the ticker and compare to VTI then get back to me. And that’s without even mentioning gold.
    - no_wizard 9mo ago
      My VT shares have risen in bear direct proportion to VTIs relative underperformance. The main difference is the international exposure of VT.
    - deadbabe 9mo ago
      I did, and I see most years it has not beaten VTI… and if you invested 10k in them for the past 10 years VTI is near 2.5x more money. May be worth it for diversification, but you’d be very lucky if it outperformed the next 10 years.
    - andsoitis 9mo ago
      > for over a year now. What if you zoom out to say, 5 years, 10 years? Or are you predicting that from here on out, VEA will outperform say, the S&P500 and the NASDAQ?
      - therobots927 9mo ago
        Yes I think it will outperform. I don’t know if you’ve seen the recent news in the US but things are going downhill very quickly. I don’t expect us to stay out of a recession for long once our government collapses into a dictatorship.
achierius 9mo ago
What is this supposed to mean? Yes, people are unhappy with the choice of "high risk of losing 1/2 of your savings at an inopportune moment" and "watch it all decay away thanks to our inherently inflationary regime".
- 10000truths 9mo ago
  > high risk of losing 1/2 of your savings at an inopportune moment Operative word being moment. The volatility is irrelevant if you wait it out long enough, hence "long term". If you need a shorter term low-risk investment vehicle, that's what treasury bills/notes are for. > watch it all decay away thanks to our inherently inflationary regime Any alternative investment strategy is equally affected by inflation.
zeroonetwothree 9mo ago
If you think it will go down you can short the market. If you think it will go up just more slowly well that’s hardly all that bad?
koolba 9mo ago
> Back to the stock market. It’s a very different calculus when nominal bonds are paying 5% and TIPS are paying 2.6% above inflation. The nowhere to go but the stocks holds more water when the ten year was paying 0.55%.
- greyface- 9mo ago
  > TIPS are paying 2.6% above inflation. 2.6% above CPI. Investor calculus should include a consideration of how CPI is set vs what their actual personal rate of inflation will be.
MuffinFlavored 9mo ago
Is this the answer for citizens of countries other than America? I don't think it is.

Mistletoe 9mo ago

If we judge it by the lost decade after the 2000 tech bubble definitely not back to stocks. A portfolio of things like gold, small cap value, long term treasuries did 10% a year while stocks did like 0% a year for a decade. https://portfoliocharts.com/2021/12/16/three-secret-ingredients-of-the-most-efficient-portfolios/ https://portfoliocharts.com/2021/12/16/three-secret-ingredie...

deadbabe 9mo ago
you cannot cherry pick, you must judge stocks over multiple decade long trends.
- therobots927 9mo ago
  What’s no longer outperforming? Gold?
  - Mistletoe 9mo ago
    Bitcoin just had a down year in 2025 when it was supposed to be the bull year. One of the worst performing assets of 2025. Doing well so far in 2026.
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  Yes but also nobody's absolutely forcing you to keep your money if you feel like stocks are in turbulence In fact you win even more if you feel like stocks are bubbly and wait in say gold or short term and you buy more stocks when they are cheap Also US stocks have underperformed compared to EU when you take all factors into account and all US stocks have rather been focused on AI hype which once again is a bubble which will fundamentally break the US economy. It's like saying 2008 crisis still made you money long term Sure if you are 20 years deep and even then nobody could've predicted what happened. The sentiments were extremely low I am one of the biggest index funds advisors usually and that's when I read finance books and wanted to go into finance but genuinely felt like index funds are just so great that the need is very low In fact I must admit that I dislike saying Gold but its genuinely one of the best assets (although it may be overvalued now not sure), another investment is specifically globalize your index fund portfolio to extreme/exclude US. In fact if possible bet on index funds on the opposite side of AI which most likely feels gold and yes, I am a little sad about this fact but rules of the game changes at points of extremes so gold is valid option right now
  - andsoitis 9mo ago
    > you buy more stocks when they are cheap but they are unlikely to be cheaper in the future than they are right now (https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/advisor-resources/interactive-tools/sp-500-historical-trends https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/advisor-resources/inte...). so if you have the money but defer buying them, you lose out on the time value of money.
    - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
      I understand this but realize that there are dips of almost 25% I invest in Index funds for peace of mind as well. That the market remains reasonably happy/sad and I can be for the long run. People discount this fact but imagine your concerns if you feel like 25% of your savings just evaporated because a guy ten layers detached from you burnt all the money on AI compute and there is no moat (Ahem ahem) If you don't want peace of mind, people should angel invest or build their own side hustles but then you are getting some savings anyway and its better to invest than keep it in banks (once you have a safe amount saved) But if you are saving money and still facing 25% crisis. Yeah... I understand where you are coming from but if you can expect a 50-75% dip in market this time (some companies are 2-5x overvalued just because they slap AI, their P/E ratio's straight up just don't make any sense at all!) So if you are willing to consider such dip for unforseen amount of time for unforseen returns in future when you can get a pretty safe investment for X amount of years being very liquid and historically in such times there are times when bond prices have been larger than stock prices If I remember correctly, Intelligent Investors suggests an intelligent approach towards this (in one of the starting chapters of the book)
      - deadbabe 9mo ago
        P/E ratios rarely seem to make sense and yet people have been making money for a long time buying stocks with crazy P/E.
        Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
        Just because people have been making money with stocks with crazy P/E historically doesn't mean that its meant to continue Especially when you realize on aggregate, Companies long term have to reflect profit and less P/E otherwise if your stock index fund has larger P/E ratio, then you are absolutely taking on higher risk There is no free lunch. You are also forgetting that the reason the extrapolation of stock markets growth from historical data correlates to future data is that there is a benchmark of productivity underneath it all. Stock markets theoretically grows when productivity of all businesses in an economy improve which can improve due to scientific and economic reasons and the faith in the system that it does improve Quite frankly, if you can't observe this, do not invest in index funds but rather something else which can reflect some amount of productivity (Short term bonds are needed by govt to improve life of the people so that they can pay more taxes in aggregate and improve conditions thus improving productivity as well) I recommend the book Intelligent Investing and The little book of common sense investing by the legendary John Bogle (May he rest in peace)
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

bee_rider 9mo ago

These days canned food often seems like a good investment

therobots927 9mo ago

You say that like “stock market” = the US stock market. It doesn’t. And the smart money recognized this a couple years ago. You’ve been presented with a false dichotomy.

deadbabe 9mo ago
Is there a better stock market than the US stock market?
- therobots927 9mo ago
  VEA. Look it up. Europe, Hong Kong, etc have been outperforming the US for over a year now. Google the ticker and compare to VTI then get back to me. And that’s without even mentioning gold.
  - no_wizard 9mo ago
    My VT shares have risen in bear direct proportion to VTIs relative underperformance. The main difference is the international exposure of VT.
  - deadbabe 9mo ago
    I did, and I see most years it has not beaten VTI… and if you invested 10k in them for the past 10 years VTI is near 2.5x more money. May be worth it for diversification, but you’d be very lucky if it outperformed the next 10 years.
  - andsoitis 9mo ago
    > for over a year now. What if you zoom out to say, 5 years, 10 years? Or are you predicting that from here on out, VEA will outperform say, the S&P500 and the NASDAQ?
    - therobots927 9mo ago
      Yes I think it will outperform. I don’t know if you’ve seen the recent news in the US but things are going downhill very quickly. I don’t expect us to stay out of a recession for long once our government collapses into a dictatorship.

achierius 9mo ago

What is this supposed to mean? Yes, people are unhappy with the choice of "high risk of losing 1/2 of your savings at an inopportune moment" and "watch it all decay away thanks to our inherently inflationary regime".

10000truths 9mo ago
> high risk of losing 1/2 of your savings at an inopportune moment Operative word being moment. The volatility is irrelevant if you wait it out long enough, hence "long term". If you need a shorter term low-risk investment vehicle, that's what treasury bills/notes are for. > watch it all decay away thanks to our inherently inflationary regime Any alternative investment strategy is equally affected by inflation.

zeroonetwothree 9mo ago

If you think it will go down you can short the market. If you think it will go up just more slowly well that’s hardly all that bad?

koolba 9mo ago

> Back to the stock market. It’s a very different calculus when nominal bonds are paying 5% and TIPS are paying 2.6% above inflation. The nowhere to go but the stocks holds more water when the ten year was paying 0.55%.

greyface- 9mo ago
> TIPS are paying 2.6% above inflation. 2.6% above CPI. Investor calculus should include a consideration of how CPI is set vs what their actual personal rate of inflation will be.

MuffinFlavored 9mo ago

Is this the answer for citizens of countries other than America? I don't think it is.