Thanks. My own struggle is looking at my 401k and the 12 month growth and trying to figure out how to avoid a decline I agree is likely. It's tough to understand options and what they mean, but I remember the decline a decade ago. It sucked then, and my 401k is valued significantly higher than it was then.
A harum scarum discussion that I see a lot (and that mk originally posted, and I pooh-poohed, and as is often the case, I'm coming around to his way of thinking) is that ETFs are, effectively, derivative products and that in a period of extreme volatility, they may not act like stocks. They may act like derivatives (tank way faster than the stocks that make them up). A lot of the chatter I'm seeing these days talks about risks/rewards. I pulled everything to cash a year ago. That means I gave up on what? 30% of the market? But if I backtest my portfolio I'd be up like 8%. I wasn't 100% FAANG which is what's driving the tops right now. Instead I'm up 0%. But if things crash, I'm down 0%. Whereas if someone suddenly decides a car company that sells ten thousand cars a year and loses between $4k and $13k on each one of them might not be worth $300 a share, anyone holding Tesla stock might be feeling bad. I have extreme loss aversion. I dump my stuff into things I think are safe. I don't think the market is safe right now, and I don't think there are a lot of opportunities in any publicly-traded company at the moment.