chose the wrong time to retire, that's for sure. lost a bundle.
Ouch.
I hate to say it, but I don't think we have even seen the real drops yet. We're just blowing off a little excess froth. It will take the next year and a half. There will even be periodic sucker-rallies lasting for weeks or a month, then...trap door. Crashes never go down in a straight line. 2001 didn't. 2007 didn't. There were painful declines, glimmers of hope, then breath-taking drops. It's almost like they are custom designed to sucker people in to staying in. Just at the point you are about to capitulate and cut your losses, it rebounds for a while and you exhale and pat yourself on the back for not panicking and selling at the bottom. Then...that Wiley Coyote moment where you blink uncomprehendingly at the camera as you realize you've ran off the cliff and then ....free fall.
I'm not even going to say out-loud how low I think it will go. You'd call me nuts. I hope as you reached retirement you got heavy in bonds and light on risk assets.
We were primed for it anyway. Free money printing pumping the largest asset balloon since the Tulip Mania for 10 years, and now a little critter from a wet market in Wuhan shows up with a nasty sharp little pin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania But it would have been something, sooner or later.
I don't short markets. Only insider-traders and fortune-tellers short markets. I have been transition to cash slowly since 2015. It was obvious something sooner or later was going to pop this loose-Fed asset bubble. If I survive the COVID, I'll pick through the rubble and buy back in at pennies on the dollar. If I don't survive, then I have no need of financial planning.