Your Retirement Portfolio Is Like Kindling. Trump Just Lit a Match.
Our stock market is starting to crack. Investor confidence is rapidly dissipating. And changes in the way Wall Street works mean that the impact on your retirement portfolio could be far more severe than you may realize.
With the S&P 500 index down nearly 8 percent from its February peak, the U.S. equity markets are approaching bear-market territory, signaling a growing consensus in corporate America that a recession may be around the corner. After declining for three months in a row, consumer confidence is at its lowest level since July 2022, according to the University of Michigan index. Retailers are suffering: Ralph Lauren stock fell 19 percent in the last month alone. There are plenty of other stocks that are tanking, too.
Some of this was entirely predictable. The markets have been on an upward tear for the past eight years, hitting record highs both in the first Trump administration and under President Joe Biden. We were probably long overdue for the inevitable correction. The question, though, is how ugly this one will get. If history is any guide, it could get pretty bad: Financial reckonings tend to happen once every 20 years or so, and we are nearly 17 years out from the devastating financial crisis of 2008.
This time feels different because the damage is at least partly inflicted by the nine-week-old Trump administration, which recently signaled its determination to impose disastrous tariffs, even if doing so unleashes a recession. Corporate executives and Wall Street are rattled.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/opinion/stock-market-trump-retirement.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U4.piNT.pe5qxvKNwMR-&smid=url-share
= new reply since forum marked as read
into weighted funds can be/are a problem. I sold our entire retirement account end of quarter in March 2000, then lost sleep for almost 3 years until it was reinvested. During that time Peter Lynch was on CNBC advising people to hang in there for the long haul. That might be great for young people but not someone getting to retire and those who need to take a minimum distribution from their IRA. Fortunately we were still years away from retirement but had decent gains during the tech bubble.
A financial advisor is like anyone else one might hire, learn something about it and then question. Thanks again 
"... Not only do such funds charge lower fees, but they also outperformed the actively managed funds in recent years. Little wonder, then, that they are widely popular, with roughly half of the money in the equity markets — some $13 trillion, according to Morningstar — invested in index funds or other types of passively invested funds that target certain types or groups of stocks...
... That all sounds good, except for one other thing. The same new players, like Citadel, that have taken over some of the specialist trading functions on Wall Street also make money by fomenting volatility in the markets, trading in and out of stocks daily and generating more momentum behind a handful of winners. And the faster winners accelerate, the more money index funds automatically plow into them. This cycle helps explain how seven technology stocks — the so-called Magnificent Seven, which includes Apple, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla — now make up nearly a third of the value of the entire S&P 500..."