The majority of stock / bonds is held by pensions, individual retirements, and as collateral for things like life insurance and annuities. Billionaires own a small percentage and often for the companies they themselves founded and own.
It’s unfortunate there are layoffs but this is the process of weeding out bad companies and encouraging good companies. If we let the zombie companies continue on all of society would be damaged.
Not a surprise: you would have to go as far back to 2002-2001 to have two consecutive negative years. high inflation does not affect the ability of huge companies like Walmart and McDonald's to generate record earnings and profits. This is why I stayed invested and did not sell in 2022.
Unless you’re about to retire, it shouldn’t matter. As long as you’ve been dollar cost averaging every month and buying more into it, you’ll be in a much better position when you do retire. The market is always going to cycle up and down (over long term) and you just need to deal with it.
And if you’re close to retirement and seeing large changes due to to market, you haven’t invested properly. The closer you are to retirement the more safe the investments should be.
Checking your 401k balance every day at 30 years old is going to make you crazy.
