the pie is getting smaller but the oligarchs are getting bigger slices.

At least you don't have a drinking problem

It's going well with the 'Make America Great Again' over the other side of the pond

These are the type of comments I came to read on Lemmy.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines

Maybe even be able to afford the ritzier corrugated cardboard boxes everyone’s talking about?

You can wait until the market recovers, and as long as you buy back at a price lower than what you sold, call it a win.

Right, thats the magic, but its not that easy. No one knows when that will occur.

You have to accurately predict both a high enough point to profit, but also, and much harder, put the money back in when you decide its "low enough". Look at historical recoveries. You said it yourself, most people aren't playing the market daily. The folks that are pulling out may miss the recovery by weeks or more because they're not watching. I know I don't watch that closely, but I also don't try to time the market.

Dont chase, “what could have been” because youll always feel like you lost

Isn't that what trying to time the market is doing? The folks that are pulling out to put in later are attempting to time the market.

I'm arguing the opposite. "Time in the market beats timing the market."

Timing the exact top and bottom is impossible, but you can always sell at an all-time high

An all-time high? So on point over the prior record and you sell?

and buy at a 52 week low.

I'm not understanding your strategy here. What are you accomplishing by putting your money back into the market at the dollar figure equal to the lowest value in the last year (52 weeks)? Especially if you sold at one point over the prior record (the all time high) you could be out of the market for years while stocks are on a rapid increase. The last 2 years of the S&P500 were both north of 23% returns back to back. Using your method you would have sold sometime in 2022 losing all those HUGE gains.

What if the recover occurs prior to stocks ever hitting the 52 week low? You'd still be out of the market and will have missed the recovery.

Personally, I find it more effective for myself if I frame it in terms of “owning the most shares” instead of “making the most dollars”.

If I started with 100 shares and now have 200 shares, I consider that a win, even if the 200 shares together are worth less than the 100 shares were at one time.

This confuses me even more. Number of shares is completely irrelevant. Stock splits double shares (and half values), a reverse stock split would double value (but half number of shares). I mean, if you're just interested in number of shares, you do you, but most people use stocks as an investment vehicle where the value of those stocks is primary value (voting rights being a second value but most people don't care about that).

You can never time the lowest point.

You're cheating this exercise. We were talking about properly guessing when to buy back into the market, and you've predicated your solution with this:

What you can do however is guarantee yourself a massive gain over the next few years when the stocks inevitably go back to pre-trump levels by buying it now

This presupposes you've already sold to a cash position prior to the fall. So that would be accurately timing the market at the best time to sell off. If you sold even a month ago, you would have already incurred a loss from the highest peak value. You're arguing against the parent post about selling off all stocks to a cash/bond position today. You're both depending on a close-to-perfect timing of the market. He's depending on buying in at the low, you're depended on knowing when the high was to sell.

Also, I think its sound thinking to always be suspicious of anyone's claim saying "What you can do however is guarantee yourself a massive gain" when talking about investments. There is no such thing as a guarantee in investing.

That sounds like a rational answer. Stock markets are not rational. Also, who's to say the next admin isn't just a carbon copy of this one?