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Comment by vrganj | Hacker News Reader

If one were to think a major stock market crash was coming up, led by the AI bubble bursting, but reinforced by the major self-own that is the Iran war, how would one best prepare ones investments?

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https://www.lynalden.com/march-2026-newsletter/ (control-f “The Investment Implications of Chaos”)

Not investing advice, I’ve reallocated away from US domestic equities to international equities (VXUS) as a majority of a portfolio. This hedges against a correction from overweight Mag 7 exposure and US economic growth impairment from current policies (imho).

https://www.axios.com/2026/03/27/stocks-trump-iran-nasdaq

https://totalrealreturns.com/n/VTI,VXUS?start=2025-01-20

https://www.apolloacademy.com/sp-500-concentration-approachi...

I think a crash is coming and I do nothing. I rebalance my stock/bond split and keep a large emergency fund as per usual.

Either you need the cash now and are already in short-term treasuries or you're it it for the long-term and you'll be laughing at this question when the Dow hits 100k.

One should either weather out the storm or if one wants to cash out soon or manage their portfolio more closely they would pick the defensive assets they trust the most and hold until they stop thinking the stock market crash is coming up or stop trusting those assets. If they really think the crash is imminent, maybe investing some excess money into shorting the market while setting trailing stop loss would be a fun activity that might turn profitable

If you genuinely think these two events will shake the foundations of the US economy, then no investment is really going to protect you; you can't expect a system to shield you from the very thing that's breaking it.

There is crypto but even that got infiltrated by institutional wall street money. There are off-shore jurisdictions but the recent Iran war has showed these can be very vulnerable at a moment notice. There is China, but a Taiwan invasion could reduce your assets there to zero.

Honestly, I think the best bet is crypto/Bitcoin, by far. It operates across borders and still relatively insulated from government reach. Unlike gold, oil, or anything physical, it can be moved without physical visibility.

If everyone (most people) think the same, shouldn't you do the opposite?

Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. Etc.

That might be the case if the market was completely abstract and removed from ground truths.

My feelings about these things don't come from markets.

I don' think that logic is intended for the top... It is what you should do when you are closing to bottom or are recovering already but most of the market does not yet see it.

Being greedy at the top will take longest time to recover. Catching the falling knife.

The advice I have heard is if you think there will be a significant drop in the market you liquidate all your holdings while they are still high and then rebuy when the price is low. Granted this is a gamble though, if you’re wrong then you just sold all your stock and are no longer participating in the market plus you need to pay capital gains tax

Did you hear this advice from 100 broke people or one lucky schmuck?

This is significantly safer than shorting that some people here suggest.

You can't lose money sitting on cash. While when shorting your potential loss is infinite.

Mistiming the market is losing out on potential gains, which is losing money compared to sitting on cash. Cash doesn't grow.

Most people are best off investing in index funds and forgetting about it for 10+ years.

Dunno, but yesterday was the first time ever I felt confident shorting nearly across the board. Nearly.

Other than buying oil futures, probably selling to cash and getting ready to buy when it hits the fan.

You can go all cash so not risking leverage via shorts, etc. But a lot of folks think that's dumb. I feel better being in cash right now as the mental stress of big loses in middle age is not worth the missed gains if I'm wrong. To each their own.

You don’t think the US dollar will take a dive along with US stocks?

What specific thing(s) are you worried that USD will take a dive relative to?

Then once you have an answer to that question, that might point you towards what you want to be long.

How would buying Euros compare in terms of exposure?

The USD could take a dive against: yuan, eu, gbp, rial, gold, silver, platinum, WTI, SPY, etc.

Only a few of them will matter on a day-to-day basis if you're currently in the US with assets valued in USD.

Couldn't you just exchange your EUR for USD as needed? Use it as your reserve currency?

Traders could start buying their oil using Yuan, for example. That’s not a theoretical anymore

What percent of dollars are tied up in in-flight oil transactions? And I suppose also in accounts that will be used for oil transactions in the planned future? That’s the mechanism for that supporting the value of the dollar, right, like, increased dollar demand via being used for oil market transactions?

The point is that the Petrodollar system requires countries to buy US treasuries to be able to buy oil. That is what makes borrowing cheap for the US, and what keeps the dollar demand up.

I'm not clear on how the Petrodollar system actually works.

If oil is sold in dollars, that only has to affect dollar demand for the time it takes to transit through some other currency to dollars to oil. So however long that takes to settle.

Where do the additional demand components come from? Why do countries have to buy US treasuries to be able to buy oil? Don't they just have to use dollars for the transaction?

I have a big chunk in FXE (like owning Euros) precisely for this reason.

If your debts are also denominated in USD, their value will be fixed relative to your cash assets. This assumes a fixed rate, of course, but a 30 year fixed is common in the US and makes up a substantial portion of most folks’ debt.

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