Autolykos comments on "Risk" means surprise - LessWrong

6 Post author: PhilGoetz 22 May 2015 04:47AM

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Comment author: Autolykos 22 May 2015 12:20:14PM 0 points [-]

Exactly. Stocks are almost always better long-term investments than anything else (if mixed properly; single points of failure are stupid). The point of mixing in "slow" options like bonds or real estate is that it gives you something to take money out of when the stocks are low (and replenish it when the stocks are high). That may look suboptimal, but still beats the alternatives of borrowing money to live from or selling off stocks you expect to rise mid-term. The simulation probably does a poor job of reflecting that.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 22 May 2015 12:53:35PM *  0 points [-]

That's no reason to tell someone with hundreds of thousands of dollars to put half of it in bonds. The market isn't going to stay down for 10 years.

Comment author: shminux 22 May 2015 03:03:53PM 4 points [-]

The market isn't going to stay down for 10 years.

...Yet it has, multiple times in the last 100 years, if you invest a lump sum. Regular contributions are a different story.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 25 May 2015 09:40:48PM *  3 points [-]

The US stock market? No, it hasn't. I checked a graph of it before writing that. "Time the market is down" is not the time between peaks on the graph. It's the time between periods when stocks are a better investment than bonds. For the Great Depression, that was 3 years.

Comment author: Lumifer 22 May 2015 03:14:50PM *  6 points [-]

That's no reason to tell someone with hundreds of thousands of dollars to put half of it in bonds.

As a matter of empirical observation, rich people with millions of dollars do NOT keep them all in equties and, in fact, tend to allocate a chunk of their wealth to bonds. How large a chunk is debatable.

The market isn't going to stay down for 10 years.

Tell that to the Japanese.

Comment author: mwengler 27 May 2015 10:37:36PM 0 points [-]

The market isn't going to stay down for 10 years.

Both the Nasdaq composite and the SP500 reached peaks in early 2000 which they did not get back to until 2013.