From the Economist. I believe they understand the economy
8 trillion of that debt was added by Trump in his first administration
There is no reward without risk. If you want no risk you get 4% down to 0.5 like the 2000-2020 period (or less) for life. The amount in your 401k is there only because you accepted risk. A smart man (Daniel Kahneman) won a Nobel prize in economics studying people like you Kane.
Basically he verified that humans love making money, but they hate losing money 20 times more. This causes them (amateur investors) to always do the wrong thing at the exact wrong time. Saying you “don’t have time” for the markets to recover is only true if you are in you 90’s. Take the emotion out of it. People and traders on Wall St were literally committing suicide in 1987, yet look at the chart below showing what a small blip it was. The markets always go up. There also will always be periods of downward movement. This is not the last correction. The big money is made right now. April 2025 will be looked back upon as the month many people continued to BUY and it made them very wealthy. One reason amateur investors accrue less than half the gains of the Dow, S&P and NASDAQ is because they jump in and out at exactly the wrong time. If you missed just the biggest 20 UP days in the markets in the last 20 years, your returns are less than half of the overall market returns.
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I agree, that’s equally as horrible.
Let me address a couple of things. I’m not on team red or team blue. I HATE them both. I just hate team red a tiny bit less. They all act like children, and every single one is corrupt IMO.
I traded for a while and read a lot about the emotional side of it. We’re basically our own worst enemies, very true. I won some, lost some, and after a few years decided I can’t beat the market in the long run. My biggest mistake was selling too soon. Timing the market is hard.
I hate my job, it’s 12 hours a day of unrewarding work, that I’ve done for 34 years now. I wanted to get out at 62. I have everything in the S&P 500. I wanted to get to a million this year. I thought that would be a pretty good accomplishment for someone that makes $24 an hour. To see it all go down the drain is heartbreaking for me. I feel stupid on so many levels at this point.
I’m in the “this time is different” camp. Listening to these people talk is just insane. Peter Navarro just said 0% tariffs are not enough. They want the whole trade deficit offset. How is some tiny third world country going to buy as much from us as we buy from them??? They want to destroy this country.
To think a depression level crash that took 25 years to recover from can’t happen again is conformation bias. Just cause it hasn’t happened in 95 years doesn’t mean it can’t.
I think at some point we’ll see a really and then the trapped longs will all sell. Then the real crash will begin. Fingers crossed I’m wrong!
I truly understand where you are. I retired a year and a half ago because I hated going to work. Loved the job, just couldn’t handle the stupidity any more. I also save very diligently, feeling a great accomplishment was achieved.
You are not stupid. You did very well. You are still doing better than most people as they approach retirement.
The best approach, I think, would be to not make any major changes. Do not retire now, do not sell stock. Wait until things settle out. I am hoping that will not be a long time.
Once you can see how the trend is, you can make a better decision. Right now, no one has ever seen this before and it is hard to forecast the result.
I also hope you have figured out how to handle health care after you retire.
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OK, well there is your problem !! That’s a pretty risky investment strategy for so close to retirement. You are heavily into the tech sector at about 30%. The S&P 500 is coming off back-to-back 20% returns, which hasn’t happened in 25 years. It was also trading at a very frothy 27+ PE multiple, well outside the normal range. If you follow a lot of the investment community, they attribute the last 2 years performance to AI hype train. A correction was coming…
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Lost about $250K from VTSAX in less than a month, mostly in 401K and Roth. What a ride! 
It looks like a comfortable early retirement will be pushed further. For now, I plan to do nothing on VTSAX and see how long it’d take to have my money back.
For new money, what are good investment options for time like this?
The entire market is down. So it is to be expected that VTSAX is down.
For new investment options, it probably depends on your risk tolerance. If you have extra cash you could buy funds at a relatively low cost now.
Personally, I think I will look for some bargains on stocks I have been interested in but I will probably stay with the stodgy, dull variety. That way I can sleep at night.
Bonds, money markets, etc.
We are in uncharted times, what is a safe refuge for our money?
Our company used to use Vanguard for our 401k. I was more diversified at that point. Then they went to some outfit no one has ever heard of. The only thing that the fees weren’t outrageous on was their S&P 500 etf. So I put it all in that. It was working out well till it wasn’t lol
How about this to preserve the principal?
Indexed Annuity Performance Examples - Hyers and Associates
Technically it’s a good time to buy funds at a “discounted” price.
I bought $10K VTI early March, now it’s less than $8,500. You need to have a FIRM belief to keep this going. I probably can do that for about 6 months, then I will lose my faith and do something else. 
Annuities always get pushed during market downturns, never during the upswings like the previous 2 years…
There isn’t one single best way to deal with the current mess. Life circumstances rule against any one approach. It would take 20-20 foresight to choose the absolute best course of action or inaction.
The single, undeniable element of this tragedy is, “it just didn’t have to happen. It’s self-inflicted”. I compare it to Russian Roulette as played by a dyslexic. A shell in every chamber sans one … whoops!
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I think everyone here who is in pain is figuring out they had the wrong asset allocation for their personal situation, and most of it has to do with how close you are to retirement.
@kane22 if you were 100% stocks or close to that, I think you’ve found out that was a bad idea. By the way, ignore the people here who tell you to “stay the course” or “buy the dip”. If you stay the course with a stock-heavy allocation, you could be down 50% in a year. If you buy the dip, you could be buying all the way down, which is what I did with some individual gold mining stocks during 2022, and that really stung, though they’ve come back quite a bit. I won’t ever do that again.
You need to start at the beginning, probably with a fiduciary CFP advisor, to help you plan all aspects of your upcoming retirement - not just the portfolio, but legal documents, insurance, long term care, your Social Security and Medicare strategies. How you’re going to take distributions from the accounts… in what amounts, in what order. Help with budgeting.
https://clark.com/personal-finance-credit/investing-retirement/how-to-find-a-financial-advisor/
In the meanwhile, you should not panic sell your stocks. The worst time to act is when you are panicking. When a bounce comes, and everyone thinks. “whew it’s over” then quietly place orders.
I sincerely think that someone 54 years old during these fraught times could be well-served by having 50% in bonds, 50% in stocks. Stay away from “high yield” bonds. You want “core bonds”, “aggregate bonds”, “total bond market”, or US Treasuries. And of the stocks, I’d really go with a Global stock fund. The entire world. The US is deciding that it doesn’t want to play with others. Well guess what? The US is only 26% of world GDP. The other 74% will be OK with us having a diminished role… they are going to trade around us.
Up until everything started crashing, my International stocks were recently doing very well compared to my US stocks. The German ETF “EWG” was up 23.5% from 1/1/2025 to 3/18/2025, but since then it has gone down, obviously… but it’s still positive this year! I think in years to come the US is not going to outperform, simply because our stock prices ran way too far ahead of actual US GDP growth. It’s been a bubble. Trump, unfortunately, popped the bubble. But it would have popped anyway.
So get yourself into 50% global stock fund, 50% high quality bond fund, then go see an advisor of the type Clark Howard recommends.
Why should you listen to me? I’m a multi-millionaire (not bragging, it’s just true), my family did it on mostly one income (mine), my wife teaches part-time. We raised two kids, sent them to college without debt, house paid for and loved to death (a bit worn out), two old cars paid for, I’m retiring soon hopefully in a year before I turn 65, and my portfolio is down -3.5% from its peak because I was very diversified, and not highly concentrated in US mega cap stocks and the “Magnificent Seven” stocks which have been the most dangerous and bubbly parts of the market. I had global stocks, bonds, cash, gold & other commodities, real estate (REIT) funds. I have annuitized some of my portfolio with a Clark-approved QLAC longevity annuity.
I have seen this in a number of places around the Internet, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.
What is a real world scenario where some tiny country has the ability to produce goods for the US, but they cannot buy anything from the US? Is it “cannot” or “will not”?
If it is “cannot”, then I see nothing wrong with charging them some transaction fee to access US markets.
Maybe don’t tariff goods from Lesotho because they have a miniscule impact on the US, I can’t even name one such good… something agricultural and tropical that we cannot grow anyway… and because it would help a poor country lift itself from the muck and increase American soft power in Africa…
Oh wait, we don’t care about soft power any longer. We’re just transactional now. Got it.
There are a lot of third world countries that have gold, diamond, rare earth mines. The people have no money to buy anything. A lot of them use slave labor.
Look at Vietnam, the work in sweat shops making all our clothes/shoes for 50 cents a day.
It sucks that things are the way they are. I feel bad for the people in other countries that have to work in conditions like that.
It sucks that companies all moved overseas just to make more money.
NAFTA was the beginning of the end for this country. Now we’re a consumer nation
Never? 
The link is intended for open discussion. No one is pushing anything
The AMERICAN CORPORATIONS that moved production overseas need to be targeted. Our COUNTRYMEN sold us out.
Is that indexed annuity net of ALL fees? If so, I’ll take some financial math to it and get back to everyone. The distributions are taxable right?