If your situation is such that you can spare a part of that 200,000, like maybe 20,000 - 25,000 dollars and would like to invest it in a bit of education, why not make your own “fund” of boring dividend stocks, maybe 10-ish.
Look up the Dividend Aristocrats and the Dividend Kings. Go to Fidelity and check the top ten holdings in some of their many funds managed for growth and income. Learn what you can. There is a wealth of info about individual stocks on sites like Fidelity. (Copy their homework.
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Find a utility, a consumer staple, and some other boring stocks. Try to catch them on a bad day. You will not be able to live off the dividends for just that amount of investment, but you can take them or reinvest them.
The stock goes up and the stock goes down and the stock goes up, but you will get paid 4 times a year and quite a few of them will raise that dividend annually. Meanwhile, the right stocks can just plug along, their share price increasing significantly over time. Solid dividend stocks pay you to wait.
If in a taxable account, you will be taxed on the dividend, of course, and if you sell with a gain, you will get a tax on that — or take a loss if you can’t stand the stock anymore. You can be your own fund manager. You decide all of it. Some people do not think this is fun though.
But the thing right now is that I really do believe we could be in some seriously uncharted waters. That T-word is scaring the heckouta me. I mean T for Tarriffs. If those take hold, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet when it comes to inflation.
Anyway, if taking some of your cash and setting up your own fund to manage appeals to you, do your homework now — and make a list and check it twice — and probably wait a while and enjoy being over 4 on money market for the time being. (There could be some opportunities right around the corner to begin to dollar-cost average in. But, of course, I don’t know. And nobody else does either.)
Boomer