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Comment by champagnepapi | Hacker News Reader

100% long US equities. Dollar cost average. If anyone is fearful of a crash buy downside protection with put options to cover your long. Although why bet against US business in the long term (20+ years)?

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See Japan, people said the same thing way back when.

If you were 100% Japanese equities (Nikkei), then you would have had a problem over the last few years, especially if you start at the 1989 peak. But a 60/40 JP-stocks/JP-bonds broke even. And a 30/30/40 portfolio of JP-stocks/non-JP-stocks/JP-bonds did very well:

* https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=265807

Investing only in the place you live, called "home country bias", is something to be avoided by everyone:

* https://www.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGGEB.pdf

* https://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-h...

Very good point on geographic diversity and over the long term is should work to investor advantage. In the short term, during a crash correlations are likely to be high and moves in EM more extreme (small exit doors).

However, my original point was that assuming things will be golden forever (or at least a very long time) usually ends badly.

To your follow up on allocations, unlike the past, a large bond holding is unlikely to save you this time (very limited price appreciation potential) and could go the other way when under stress (liquidity issues, forced redemptions to cover equity losses). It is harder to hide than ever before.

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