Follow-up Financing 2030 Prepare Now Building Savings Contract/Special Repayment/Fixed Deposit

I think Sunshine is missing a bit of differentiation here between individual stocks and ETFs / funds. Although even with individual stocks, a blanket statement like "the chance is 50/50" is nonsense. We are talking about economic development in publicly traded companies here, not a roulette ball that can land on black or red.

And yes, I agree with you that an ETF like MSCI World etc. naturally minimizes the risk of loss compared to having many individual stocks. But believing that you always invest in the safe profit zone is of course just as nonsense. And over 7.5 years, like the original poster, it is even very risky. Because you should only invest money in stocks if you do not need it or plan to access it at a certain time and have it left over. Basically, play money.

And yes, I agree with you that an ETF like MSCI World etc. of course minimizes the risk of loss compared to having many individual stocks. But to believe that you always invest in the safe profit zone is of course just as nonsense.

That is simply not true. Look at the chart for 30 years, or even 50. You are indeed investing in the safe profit zone. It’s just not guaranteed that your price at time X is favorable.


If you look at the MSCI World over the last 30 years, what is the worst case that could have happened?
For example, investing in 1999/2000 and wanting the money back in 2003.
But already by 2006 you would have been out of the situation with a good return. That’s 6 years. I don’t see a significantly longer period that the market would have needed to recover from crises. If you had invested around 1500 in 2007, you would have had to wait until around 2014 for price recovery. That is about the longest I can recognize here.
Still shorter than the 7.5 years that the OP’s case is about, and currently we are not at a peak but rather tendentially in a dip.

Yes, that is correct. My answer then also referred to individual stocks, and in that case, see Wirecard, nothing is secure…

You also simply have to be lucky to have invested in the right stocks.

That is exactly the point I wanted to make. You can either look for the needle in the haystack or buy the entire haystack. If you search for the needle, you might end up holding the next Google or the next Wirecard. With the index, you always get the average; that is much more predictable. Just like in a casino, your success fluctuates greatly but the house always wins.

But here nobody advised the OP to invest in individual stocks. This was all about broadly diversified funds, and to claim that this is only "for play money" is pretty conservative nonsense.

One has to be a bit cautious when looking at the return triangle and the like. That is "only" 30 years, and at least the last 10 years have been characterized by strongly expansive monetary policy. Projecting that onto the next 10-20 years... might work, or might not.

Basically, the question is always what the alternative to broad investing in ETFs as a risk component of investment can be. It is hard to find something better and above all easier to maintain...