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If you are never going to sell your ETF/stocks then yeah it doesn't matter. I read online once that a mutual fund tried to see which of there customers made the most money. The customers that made the most were the ones who had forgotten they made that investment and the others who were dead.

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> If you are never going to sell your ETF/stocks then yeah it doesn't matter.

Most people are not investing for 'fun', but rather for retirement. So "never" selling, or at least not-selling for several decades, is actually a reasonable assumption.

The main problem is that the general public read headlines and see "Markets Are Crashing!!1!" and pull out. Whereas if they could keep their cool a bit, and stay invested (and ideally keeping investing (monthly?) on the way down), they'll generally end up okay when they approach retirement.

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