Need some pep talk

It is always painful to see the small picture but my advise is the following:

  1. If you still have many years ahead to retire, then this is nothing, you need to continue building your assets. Think in number of participation instead of daily prices. Prices are volatile, but think if your ETF will be worth more or less in 10 years, probably it is more… The more you accumulated, the better in the long term (expected growth, compounding and yield).
  2. Consider your risk appetite, is it 80/20 or 60/40 more appropriate based on your current feelings? The key is consistency and discipline… and focus on building assets in number, forgetting the daily prices.
  3. Be realistic in two aspects, past performances were ridiculous, and we should not expect the same. New trends might outperform index, but index will give you an average reward without the risk of predicting what are these new trends.

I could extend more, but basically, those are key pillars to build your mental resilience.

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To add my own vast wisdom, at my ripe age of 40+: uncertainty is a part of life, it will always be there, and never go away. The art lies in coping with it.

There’s something that John Bogle said in “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing”. I wrote it down and kept it:

My own total portfolio holds about 50/50 indexed stocks and bonds, largely indexed short- and intermediate-term. At my age of 88, I’m comfortable with that allocation. But I confess that half of the time I worry that I have too much in equities, and the other half of the time that I don’t have enough in equities. Finally, we’re all just human beings, operating in a fog of ignorance and relying on our circumstances and our common sense to establish an appropriate asset allocation. Paraphrasing Churchill on democracy, “my investment strategy is the worst strategy ever devised . . . except for every other strategy that has been tried.” I hope these comments help. Good luck.

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Glad to read you’re holding strong. Let’s see what the future has in store for us and not worry too much about the present. :slight_smile:

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Episode 100: Prof. Kenneth French: Expect the Unexpected

This podcast from Ben Felix helped me quite a lot, especially the last 3 minutes.