[ezero]

Can you reference which major index fund has tanked 30% in one day?

To my knowledge Black Monday in 1982 was the biggest single day dip in the stock market, where the S&P 500 lost about 20%. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_change...

Also after these dips, did the market recover and how long did it take? Imo index funds are where you put your money away for decades. Over those years, what is the average gains per year?

There is nothing wrong with accounting for extreme events and that’s why all investment could be risky. But I am challenging your narrative.

[max_]

You are absolutely right that the largest single day drawdown for the S&P was about 20%.

But my message is that we should not be sitting ducks for these extreme risks. There is no known method to accurately know the exact maximum drawdown that a security can get in 1 day.

Days aside. The drawdowns can be worse than we can imagine over several years. For instance people that bought the the S&P during 1929 broke even at around 1955. No profit, just breaking even. A time span of about 26 years [0]

[0]: https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-dat...

[ezero]

First of all, those were during the World War years so the context matters a lot.

Overall, if you had just said to only put your money in lower risk stuff vs index funds that would make sense to me too depending on how risk averse you are. But to put 20% in something like bitcoin just seems like a weird mix of safety and gambling. I would like to see some strong numbers backing this up in the past 50 years or so where this would be more profitable AND less risky compared to the index funds.