[hlfy_hn]

"I have about $50K in an index fund, own land worth $150K (paid off) and another $200K in industrial real estate investments."

1. I don't like Index funds. They were a great investment in the past. They may be a disaster in the future.

2. "buy land they stopped making it" Mark Twain

3. "industrial real estate" could be top, could be a disaster, depending on what "industrial" means. Technology heavy REIT (IT, server, g5 infrastructure) could be okay.

You could go contrarian and keep it cash. You could diversify in foreign currencies. In the end, HN is not the right place to ask. I just recently invested in some Asian utilities companies. They pay 5-10% divendends. Have a telecom investment that pays 45% dividends. No kidding.

One word of wisdom: Do not do VC investments. I sunk a ton of money there. In for a penny, in for a dime and it will start sucking a tremendous amount of time out of you.

[perardi]

“I don't like Index funds. They were a great investment in the past. They may be a disaster in the future.”

Care to explain?

Are you worried about over-centralizing assets into index funds will screw with the market's ability to find the right prices for stocks?

Because I worry about that myself, but, then, what do you do? How do I possibly outsmart the market given the information problem?

[chrismarlow9]

I'm not sure of hify_hn's reasons why, but I've exited index funds recently due to:

- the overweight holdings in tech in many of them.

- those same tech companies are responsible for most of the growth in the past decade.

- retail investors are chasing the tail of growth which is pumping the price out of realistic prices. many more have entered the arena with robinhood, etc.

- there's too much cash being printed, feels like hyper inflation.

- the current bubbles and shift in funds (pharma desperate plays, gold safe havens) make me think everyone has a finger on the "exit" button.

- most every major indicator I see says a fall is near.

I'm no pro and this is only my opinion. Been doing this about 3 years with a mix of daytrade style plays (earnings, swings, cannabis bubbles, etc) that seed long term etf dca purchases.

I'm sitting on cash for now until near US election time. I think the robinhood retail passive crowd that's only recently started will be left holding the bag for the pros near election, much like the crypto newbies in that peak a while back who tried to get in at the top. Too many similarities of people that seem to have no basic understanding of how things work under the hood of things and just chasing a "really hot run in blackjack".

though I'm happy to admit I don't fully understand every nuance of ETF's I see/hear conversations with people clearly not understanding what they're getting into and it's just too similar to any bubble I've ever seen.

I've also considered it may just continue to go up and all this is unfounded and wont matter and I've accepted the possible loses of potentially new profit for the rest of this year. It's a cost I'm very happy to pay for peace of mind, and get back to my strategy when the world makes sense again.

In a nutshell it seems like the ETF has just become a raffle ticket that's being sold through making it easy to simply stick money into it without really looking at what you're buying and if it makes sense. Like the ETF is no longer an investment vehicle, but a product with a bunch of hype.

[devcpp]

Overall, your post is more a critic on investment in this period rather than against index funds. Except for the presence of tech, which I'm not sure is this bad for people willing to take measured risk.

>there's too much cash being printed

Agreed, but then why hold on to cash until the election rather than buy gold or similar?

[chrismarlow9]

Sure, I totally plan to return to the index when it seems to make sense so you're right, it's only a bad investment (imo) right now.

I have other investments in web entities (think reddit style aggregation sites) in niches that tend to do well in downturns. They're pretty much a very small fixed cost for me every month (spot instances on AWS ftw) and can be cut off at any time. I feel safe holding cash (and its deflation) because the profit from those is no longer seeding indexes but being stacked on my cash pile. Ideally keeping my overall cash from deflating.