It’s
been
quite
a
month,
hasn’t
it?
California
has
been
burning
down.
New
Orleans
got
more
snow
than
Minneapolis.
The
QAnon
Shaman
is
back,
in
hand,
the
political
equivalent
of
a
wink
and
a
“job
well
done.”
With
things
feeling
as
weird
as
they
are,
you’d
be
completely
within
the
spectrum
of
reasonable
reactions
anywhere
from
sobbing
at
your
desk
to
taking
up
day
drinking.
One
thing
you
should
not
do,
however,
is
change
up
your
retirement
investments.
Almost
from
Day
One
of
this
column,
I
have
been
a
proponent
of
low
cost,
passively
managed
index
fund
investing.
You
put
your
money
into
this
type
of
fund,
keep
adding
to
your
capital
(preferably
with
periodic
automatic
investments),
and
just
leave
it
alone
without
regard
to
the
news
of
the
day.
If
you
have
been
investing
this
way
for
any
significant
time,
you
have
done
quite
well
for
yourself.
The
stock
market
has
had
a
bunch
of
huge
dips
over
the
past
10
years
—
for
example,
several
shocks
related
to
the
COVID
pandemic.
Equities
markets
recovered
from
all
of
these
setbacks
in
relatively
short
order.
You
can
probably
find
plenty
of
smug
Redditors
who
claim
to
have
gotten
out
before
a
big
dip,
and
back
in
at
the
bottom,
to
triumphant
effect.
A
few
of
them
might
even
be
right:
with
as
many
people
out
there
trying
to
time
the
market
as
there
are,
odds
are
that
a
handful
actually
will
have
done
it
out
of
sheer
chance.
Still,
the
vast
majority
who
try
to
time
the
market
fail
(including
the
vast
majority
of
professional
investment
managers).
For
those
who
fail,
though,
it
is
difficult
to
tell.
If
you
tried
to
time
the
market
and
wound
up
with,
say,
a
6%
gain,
you
are
very
unlikely
to
commit
to
the
extensive
analysis
it
would
take
to
prove
that
you
would
have
realized
an
8%
gain
over
the
same
time
period
had
you
simply
stayed
put.
Much
easier
cognitively
to
just
look
at
the
little
green
upward
arrow
and
feel
like
a
genius.
So
far
I’ve
been
talking
about
staying
the
course
in
the
stock
market
through
big
general
sorts
of
news
events.
Surely
the
actual
policies
of
vastly
different
political
administrations
could
alter
the
optimal
strategy?
Nope,
not
really.
Trump
supporters
who
pulled
their
investments
when
Biden
was
elected
because
they
thought
he
was
going
to
tank
the
economy
(mostly
because
Trump
said
that,
a
lot)
were
burned
big
time.
Yet,
so
were
investors
who
pulled
their
money
out
of
the
market
in
anticipation
of
the
first
Trump
term.
Overall,
stocks
did
quite
a
bit
better,
depending
on
which
index
you
look
at,
during
the
first
Trump
term
than
they
did
under
Biden
(though
neither
holds
a
candle
to
the
stock
market’s
performance
with
Obama
in
the
White
House).
The
fact
is
that
80%
of
America’s
presidents
over
the
past
century
had
positive
stock
market
returns
during
their
tenures.
There
probably
will
be
positive
returns
again
during
this
Trump
term,
and
if
not,
a
recovery
when
whoever
the
next
president
is
comes
into
office.
If
you
are
close
to
or
in
retirement,
and
will
really
need
to
start
withdrawing
from
some
of
your
investments
in
the
near
future,
you
should
obviously
be
transitioning
to
more
stable
options
than
broad
exposure
to
the
stock
market.
For
everyone
else,
now
is
probably
not
the
time
to
go
maverick.
When
the
dips
come,
you
will
have
plenty
of
time
to
make
up
for
them
and
then
some.
More
weird
things
are
going
to
happen
over
the
coming
months
and
years.
Some
of
these
things
are
going
to
be
very
bad
for
certain
segments
of
the
population.
Look
at
your
401(k)
or
IRA
investing
strategy
as
a
little
island
of
stability
upon
which
to
weather
the
coming
storm.
It
will
be
really
nice
to
have
one
less
thing
to
worry
about.
Jonathan
Wolf
is
a
civil
litigator
and
author
of Your
Debt-Free
JD
(affiliate
link).
He
has
taught
legal
writing,
written
for
a
wide
variety
of
publications,
and
made
it
both
his
business
and
his
pleasure
to
be
financially
and
scientifically
literate.
Any
views
he
expresses
are
probably
pure
gold,
but
are
nonetheless
solely
his
own
and
should
not
be
attributed
to
any
organization
with
which
he
is
affiliated.
He
wouldn’t
want
to
share
the
credit
anyway.
He
can
be
reached
at [email protected].