Man, you're not one of those hopeless souls that "don't know anything and can't risk timing the market" your folks do seem to have a clue
Under either of those, now is not a good time to sell. The only reason it would be a good time to sell is if the economy never recovers… now that would be a once in a lifetime experience.
This all operating under the assumption you don’t actually need the cash in the near future if you have enough liquid to cover a few months of no income.
In this sense it will be much different from your average recession. Add to that the other demographic changes as Baby Boomers age out of the workforce, and we're going to have a labor shortage for the next several decades at least.
Some people with Long Covid can still work, but their brain fog makes them unable to work in their former capacity. So any job that involves a very high-functioning brain -- from coding to surgery to piloting an aircraft -- may become extremely hard to fill as time goes on.
So this time it's different? You may be interested in the book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly:
> Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6372440-this-time-is-dif...
In this particular time, there are in my opinion some extra gnarly risks that most people aren't talking about.
That said, I've been a reluctant member of the disability community for several decades, and I can also state that ME/CFS has a heckuva lot of overlap with Long Covid. The disabled community has called a lot of the things that have happened this entire pandemic, while 'experts' have gotten a lot of things wrong. I'm telling you what all the disabled people, who have been right this entire time, are saying: a lot of businesses are on the verge of collapse, because of long covid and other covid-related reasons (like, getting burned out from getting covid 3 times a year).
Go to a subreddit for nurses and see how things really are. Go to a subreddit for teachers. Our hospitals are going to collapse, I predict in a few years, if we don't change course. Our schools are going to buckle under this strain. How functional is an economy with a 36 hour wait to get in the ER and terrible educational options? What happens when all the flight attendants, teachers, nurses, doctors, bus drivers, waiters, cooks, and so on either get too sick or too burnt out and quit en masse?
That's why I'm saying it's not just "a recession," it's that plus...a whole lot of other huge economic issues.
I understand if you think this makes me sound alarmist. But, FYI, when I lived in NYC and I warned that our laissez faire attitude to the air at Ground Zero was going to give thousands of people cancer, I was also called alarmist.
As Sarah Kendzior says, it's a sin to be right too early.
Go out, in real life and you'll see that it is not that bad as media, full of emotions and sensations, told you.
That said, the places I do get out to -- medical facilities -- are the places I've been talking about. In the red state I used to live in, I saw tons of unmasked or poorly-masked healthcare workers, many of whom had had covid. In the blue state I now live in, healthcare facilities are understaffed, and it's only getting worse.
I repeat: if the question is about how to profit (or at least not lose) in the upcoming economic climate, one way to do that is to understand that healthcare, transit, education, and other in-person workforces will be severely stressed. I don't know how to make money on that, but at least you have the full picture.
What is wrong with unmasked healthcare workers?
Brain scans of folks with Long Covid are showing brain shrinkage. PET scans are showing many areas of the brain affected.
The only prevention for Long Covid is not getting Covid, and that's still mostly achieved the old-fashioned way with a combination of high-quality masks, ventilation, and air fitration.
The Texas Infectious Disease clinic has been using elastomeric respirators for years with their TB patients -- that's honestly the standard all healthcare workers should be using right now.
Btw, long covid could be a consequence of lock-downs and interruption of social contacts that we never had in history. Anxiety, reduction of movement, less working, increased consumption of fear spreading news and amount of time a front of screen... But sure, you can blame virus if you want. Or experimental vaccines.
But the TL;DR is: - Long Covid is for many sufferers, MECFS plus some extra issues like breathing problems and organ damage - MECFS is one of the most disabling illnesses out there, with some of the least-good treatment options - Some folks with either illness improve with time, but many do not, especially because there really aren't treatments right now except for rest - The level of brain fog is so severe people often become aphasic and disoriented. So it's not only that brain surgeons will have to stop doing surgery. It's that people working at an ice cream shop may not be able to count change. Severity varies by individual of course.
And finally, at the beginning of the pandemic we were hearing about the concept of "hybrid immunity" -- that basically, getting covid was good for you, because it made you extra immune to getting it again.
As time has gone on though, it appears the opposite is true. Each infection has the potential to age / deplete T cells, making a person less immune not only to another round of Covid, but to a variety of infections. So a lot of mild diseases that maybe before were kept in check and had an R0 of .95 will, with a more immune-compromised populace, turn into having an R0 of 1.15 or something. People in general will be sicker, longer, than before, with a variety of ailments, because Covid is harming their immune systems.
Monetary policy and stimulus during COVID caused a currency devaluation. If nothing else changes, the value of assets should increase, relative to a currency.
The same thing happened with monetary policy in March 2022. Interest rates went up, stocks went down.
I'm curious what others think.
But don't do it with more than 5-10% of your savings on one assumption/prediction.