The difficult truth is that no one really could know what is going to happen, including me and most others on this board, For example, if Israel and Iran get going over there with nuclear warheads, things will not be good. A few days ago McCain ws quoted to the effect of "We can't let another holocaust happen". TO me at least, this doesn't sound like carefully measured speech.
The stock market tends to ignore threats like this until it doesn't.
Six months ago my Fidelity rep wanted to meet with me and his strategist cum asset allocator becasue I "Have too much cash, and too much energy." Having too much of these served me well. But now, I only wish I
still had too much cash and too much evergy! That's just the way it tends to happen.
Not always but usually markets do not go straight down like they have been doing lately. If you want to lighten up, you might get a better opportunity. Or not, and that is the nub of the problem. Personally, I am not selling anything becasue I believe my investments to have been bought at considerably better than median values, so they should give good returns in dividends and eventually that will be reflected in stock prices. But even here a lot can go wrong- for example, risk free interest rates can go up-moving the whole discount rate for investments up along with it, and market values down.
One take home for me anyway is to beware of any generalizations. It is often said- even here on the board-oh, you can't have so much fixed income, inflation will kill you. Well, maybe so, but history shows that stocks will not prevent that murder, at lest over short to intermediate time frames
Ha