Do you mean 4% vs .4 ?

Money market same as cash? Not sure where you get that info but I have millions in a money market making more than 5% and have for years. It did go down a few months ago to 4.9% but came back up, which is still better than any cash savings account.
As for sky high market, I made a large 6-digit gain in earnings the day after the election a week ago with the rest of my money invested in index funds and a couple stocks.
If you got out of the market in 2007/2008 and in 2020, you missed some of the best comebacks. The 2007/2008 collapse took longer to recover but in 2020, we all knew it was going to a ‘v’ shape recovery and I doubled my money by staying in.
Today, I look at the world economy, and our current political and economic environment before looking at stock market tea leaves to get a feel about the market. I sold everything at its highest point in late 2021 and moved everything to money markets earning 5.x% because of our policies and incoming inflation. In 2023 I started getting back in slowly and by December 2023, I had the majority of my money in index funds and a few stocks. This has been a banner 12 months. As for charts/reports on the market, what did the tea leaves tell you about Apple, meta, nvidia, tesla 1.5 years ago? I got into these over 1.5 years ago when meta and tesla were < $100 a share, Apple in the $120’s, and I can’t remember what nvidia was before the split. I sold some of these a couple months ago with nice profits to get back into more stable index funds making 30+%.
People’s feelings today are exactly what happened in 2016. Back then, A lot of people were scared and sold, others like me, bought more or stayed fully invested.
When people get scared about market evaluations, that’s when you make money in the market. The only issues I see now are: we should not be lowering rates because we aren’t done with inflation, consumers have the largest credit debt in history and defaults usually follow, the wars, and investors making too much hype out of AI, the same way they did about .com in the early 2000’s and we know what happened then.
I have no problem hitting the sell button and moving everything back into money market if any of these issues get worse.

Sell Hubris, Buy Humiliation
Sell High, Buy Lower

BIL is 3-6 month TBILLS, which are currently over 5% before Cap gains, which is what money market buys for their returns. . .

What's a normal market? Less mega cap dominance of the weighted price indexes, less correlation of component movements. Less passive investment, which increases component correlation which increases volatility on two fronts, and less dependence upon money supply / liquidity growth and more on investment growth.

from a recent Chinese dinner
GFTU



Good Fortune to You

What does BIL and YMMV stand for? Thanks.

BIL is a market ETF which buys and holds Treasury Bills of 3 to 6 month diuration

YMMV stands for Your Mileage May Vary, which references the difference between theory and reality. . . because everyone situation is unique

Ever heard of Michael Burry?
Who Is Michael Burry?

The Buffett Indicator is over 200%. So, I am very cautious and would only invest in individual stocks which might not fall as much in a big selloff. Dell and GOOG at the moment seem reasonably valued and less likely to fall horribly if there is a crash. On the other hand, there is a lot of cash tied up in money market accounts which will help the market as interest rates go down. Be safe out there.

Not if you are talking about IRAs and 401k’s but yes if regular investment accounts. Another reason I use to continue to move IRAs to Roths… no RMDs moved to an investment account so I would be able to move in and out of cash with no tax penalty. Currently my investment account is my cash world… mostly CDs and somewhat protected structured notes..

has not effected my portfolio at all. but I don't play the way y'all do. S&P is the least of my concerns. I use very specific investments in my portfolio.

Ever since the stock market started, corrections (or drops if you prefer) have always been followed by even higher increases. How do you think the market got to where it is today? Make sure your portfolio consists of a good allocation of all types of investments and then stay the course. That is the best investment advice you’ll ever get.

Majority of my cash is in IRA's balance is in over 5% CDs

When you move non-IRA stock funds to a money market, you will owe capital gains taxes.

I wish I were as smart as many here. I can never figure out when to sell everything, and more importantly, when to buy everything back. So I just stay in mostly equities even though I’m always nervous.

I’m also impressed by the high money market returns achieved. I’ve been getting around 5% for the past couple of years. But before that it was much lower.

I have found some nice fixed instruments over the past few years, but the highest yielding ones have short duration or are callable. So those nice returns aren’t really locked in.

The idea is to buy low and sell high. But, some people, who consider themselves smart, do just the opposite.

I don't claim to be a market timer. What happened is I sold some real estate in 2022 and 2023 and have needed to make decisions about how to invest the money. I remain mostly invested in real estate but now have more money in the stock market than ever before. At the age of 82 with 83 looming on the horizon I prefer to stay on the cautious side. Like most of the world I follow what Buffett does and he has been selling some stocks that look fine to me and holding the proceeds rather than reinvesting them in other equities. I will not delve into speculating why he is selling but AAPL had become an overwhelming portion of BRK's portfolio and the potential for higher corporate tax rates had reared its ugly head.