Yeah I remember when I was posting about picking stocks with a value investing strategy starting in February 2022. One of the big reasons was that I expected the stock market to either crash and then take several years to recover or trade sideways for several years and lose to inflation. So I didn’t want to be invested in the broad markets.
I was chided for that, but since then the S&P is up 0.02% (2.20% if you include dividends). Inflation since then has been running higher than that, obviously. I’m up ~50% since then, and that’s while being way less than 100% in stocks and not even getting interest on the dry powder I’ve been sitting on (but am finally working in).
High yield savings accounts and a variety of bonds all would have beaten an S&P investor over that time frame. The same could easily be true over the next couple years as well, and the liquidity allows one to pounce on good opportunities.
Basically millennials adult financial lives have been a series of black swans and unprecedented situations, and the current one we’re going through is a very weird tug of war between high/rising interest rates and a tight labor market that’s making things play out a lot differently than usual.