[pinky1417]

There’s value in the optionality of cash! I know there’s good reason to dollar-cost average (for someone who squirrels money away primarily into index funds) since it’s difficult or impossible to time the market... and the market tends to go up over long periods. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for an indexer to carry more cash now. I’m not as extreme as you are (I just stop adding to my indexes rather than liquidating them), but the worst case is that I lose wealth to inflation. Best case is that, if market prices decline well past fair value, I can deploy capital. And, since I’m not solely an indexer, if I happen to see a particular undervalued asset while the market remains high, I can purchase it.

[fallingfrog]

I wish there was some way I could just put money into a weighted bucket of every international currency in case one or a few of them inflate to nothing. That’s the only thing that worries me.

[pinky1417]

In my humble opinion, that might overcomplicate things without providing much in the way of risk reduction. Owning a basket of currencies might make sense in a world where, globally, only some central banks had loose money policies. But, at least right now, central banks are all printing money. If you’re a US investor like me, you might have inflation concerns, but if inflation occurs globally, I might do worse owning a basket of currencies than owning USD.

What would I do if I were concerned about inflation but wanted cash? I suppose this doesn’t help anyone who’s solely into indexing, and I know this locks up cash, but I’d look for unlikely-to-fail dividend-paying companies that are relatively protected against inflation and that are trading at relatively fair values. Essentially, you’d be saying “I don’t care if I can’t sell this stock for 10 years so long as the 4%+ current dividend yield ratchets up at or above inflation.”