Dr William Bernstein gave the following advice when asked: “How much exposure should people have to stocks?”
“A lot of people had won the game before the [2008] crisis happened: They had pretty much saved enough for retirement, and they were continuing to take the risk by investing in Equities.
Afterward, many of them sold either at or near the bottom and never bought back into it. And those people have irretrievably damaged themselves.
I began to understand this point 10 or 15 years ago, but now I’m convinced: When you’ve won the game, why keep playing it?
How risky stocks are to a given investor depends upon which part of the life cycle he or she is in. For a younger investor, stocks aren’t as risky as they seem. For the middle-aged, they’re pretty risky. And for a retired person, they can be nuclear-level toxic.”
– White Coat InvestorIn another interview,
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