You don't some across as a whacko, so you must have some well thought out alternate plan. If you feel like it, tell us what it is.
I can promise that you will get no argument or counterpoint from me, I am just curious.
Ha
Well, I'm not at all against equities. Up until 2004, when I bailed from the market, I was 100% in stocks - and had been for many years. I look forward to getting back to them somewhere down the road.
In the meantime, here's a thumbnail of what informs my thinking:
- Most financial pundits (and most investors) came of age during the long-running secular bull market from 1981-2000. They know nothing else.
- The secular bear market which began in 2000 has largely been held in abeyance by the infusion of liquidity and stimulus by central bankers around the world. At the cost of gargantuan and rapidly rising debt.
- Societal obligations (SS, Medicare, and their equivalents across the developed world) are not fundable in the long run via any cogent scenario I have ever seen presented. The math simply does not work.
- The politics are such that the hard, painful decisions that could be made, won't be. It will first have to devolve into crisis.
- Financial tools such as Firecalc, wonderful as they are, have embedded within them as their major assumption that the future in front of us will never be worse than the past. There will never be a financial dislocation, for instance, worse the 1930's.
I'm an optimist by nature. But I'm utterly convinced there will be a reckoning. The math impels it.
I believe the times speak to the preservation of what one has saved. Not return on investment.
And so I have a portfolio significantly exposed to gold. Treasuries and money market funds make up the rest.
I'm not a goldbug. I actually think gold is today overpriced on a historical basis. And I'm convinced gold as an "investment" will blow up one day. But if you worry about these things like I do, there aren't a lot of safe places to put your money.
I say all these things with not a little reticence. After lurking here for awhile it's clear that there are an awful lot of smart people around. The financial acumen on this site is incredibly high. Far be it for me, a relative newbie, to suggest that there might be a fly in the ointment.
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