The best time to buy is when everyone else is losing their ass. This is the best time to buy, unless it isnt and the entire market dies.

I remember 2009-2010. It was much worse than this right now. The trick is keeping your job in this market.

You can probably elect to invest your 401k into stable funds.

Of course that doesn’t protect you from inflation.

You still might be able to choose a precious metals fund or something that might outperform inflation.

You just want to log in to your 401k account and take control of where your investments go. You always want to be invested in funds with low expense ratios, like index funds, but you can also pick funds that are invested outside the US. Most of my 403b now is in index funds or low expense ratio funds invested in Europe, Asia, and emerging markets. I just have a bad feeling about the US market for the foreseeable future for some reason

if you do that, the risk is that you miss out on buying at low share prices during the slump, which will be the lots that show the highest return when the market heads back toward normal.

The periods of fastest gains are usually immediately following a downturn, so selling your holdings when you hear bad news about the stock market going down, is exactly the wrong thing to do.

If you believe that The Trump administration policies represent a foundational destabilization of the American economy, which is a reasonable take, you might make the choice to diversify into more international funds.

So, from an investing standpoint, there’s really only two things that can happen. Either the market will recover, and continue steady growth, at which point you’ll definitely be mad if you pulled out completely. The alternative is the collapse of the Western hegemony, at which point you’ll have much bigger problems than your 401k account.

No. However if you’re the type of person to ask in this question, you should be invested in a target date fund. As part of the way they attempt to hedge for retirement, the include exposure to international funds and bonds.

I believe you can let whomever your investor is to invest it in more less aggressive funds or stocks bonds. You might be able to freeze it as well and even the option to invest yourself. But you should call whomever handles it they can probably guide you a bit. But I agree it looks pretty bleek. I’m more concerned with the dollar crashing if we default on the debt. It might all be worthless anyhow.

This is a reason we specifically created social security, its like we have learned absolutely nothing.

I always buy stocks at their lowest and sell at their highest. Haven’t lost money with that method yet.

No. Unless you had a ton of money in the account and you were already very close to retirement it just wouldn’t make sense. There are a lot of penalties when you pull an account early. I made a hardship withdrawal back in 2023 to make the down payment on my first home and that made sense for me, but even that type of thing isn’t right for everyone.

Your 401k will rebound eventually, retirement investment requires you to play the long game. If things get bad enough that your 401k is wiped out entirely then it really won’t matter whether or not you pulled the money out because it would likely be worthless in that situation.

It may be wise to change your elections so that the investments are less aggressive/volatile if you have that option, but otherwise try not to think about the total dollar amount as the economy shits the bed. It’s not like a bank account where the dollars equal dollars directly, the value of the investments can change quickly.

Does your employer offer you a match on your 401k contributions? That’s free money regardless of how the 401k is invested so you definitely want to keep that going.

Even without that generally speaking you’ll still want to continue contributing to your 401k. Remember that a 401k is long term retirement savings, the market will continue to rise/fall during your employment over the next x years. You’re not required to invest 100% in U.S. specific index funds, in fact most people would recommend allocating a mix of U.S. / International / Bonds e.g. the “lazy” portfolio is one of the more famous recommendations https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Asset_allocation

Or for just set-and-forget you can invest in target date retirement index funds if your 401k offers them (most 401k plans offer those nowadays).

Are you going to retire in the next four years? Or take all your cash out into gold, quit your job, and go into hiding for the next four years?

If neither apply to you, you can leave your money in your 401k. Selling index funds right now is ultimately up to you, but in the long term time in the market tends to beat timing the market.

What I’ve read in books is: Building up savings itself is more important than whether the returns are +10% or -10%, early in your career, since it will fluctuate but tends to average up.

And remember if your national index funds, bonds or whatever market and government backed investments lose half its value, you have bigger problems on your hand of the state of your country at that point which having cash on hand may or may not help anyway.

You should regularly invest in broad-market index funds and not pay attention to the news (as far as your investing goes).

The reverse, probably: You should probably increase your contribution.

Consider the state of the market “now”. Consider the state of the market “later”, meaning some hypothetical time between now and your eventual retirement.

If the market is low “now”, and you think it will be high “later”, you should be buying now.

The market goes through boom/bust cycles. This particular bust cycle is being precipitated by shitty political policies. You should be studying the prospectus for the stocks/products you are buying through your 401K. The prospectus tells you what company stocks make up the investment product, and will show you the long term performance. If you’re worried about US markets, you can move your some of your holdings into European/Asian stock products for a bit more diversity. In terms of risk, the stock market is riskier than the bond market, however bonds tend to preserve the purchase value over time rather than generate profit. The higher the risk, the higher the reward. What I have done is take my dividends/profits out of the stock side of the market, and use them to purchase bonds. This way I preserve the profit, and the original investment used to generate the profit stays in the risky part of the market to hopefully keep generating profit. Since the market is taking a big hit right now, now would be the time to buy, while the prices are lower, understanding that you are betting on a recovery which might not happen. Any financial advisor worth their salt would at the very least tell you to diversify your porfolio, as in don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. I would take this a step further to say, you should build up a savings account and not count on something risky like the stock market to be there for you when you retire. The stock market is just gambling.

All I have to add is be careful investing in a Roth if you plan to leave the US. Some countries don’t acknowledge it as a retirement vessel and tldr it’s a pretty bad investment if that’s the case