Subject: Re: Protecting the Downside
I would submit that
adding to gold holdings and maybe more international stocks are the best paths
is the opposite of avoid[ing] the big mistake.

“Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.” – Peter Lynch

"More Money Has Been Lost Avoiding Risk Than at the Point of a Gun"


Gold? I was a gold bug several decades ago, at the time my first kid was born. My head got straightened out long before the 29 year-long recovery got, um, recovered. I'd rather do bitcoin. https://testfol.io/?s=g1Uwki6f...

International stocks? Have you been keeping track in the news of what's happening with the European economies?
Also:
"Google AI Overview:
While a generalized "mass migration" of investments to the US is not occurring, several trends show the US attracting a significant amount of international investment. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has seen substantial inflows"

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lessen to blow of a big 30-50% drop

Roger Nusbaum:
" ... effective is simply defined as avoiding the full brunt of a large decline. Aside from my belief in its effectiveness, the 200-day SMA is simple to explain and understand.
No one rule is always correct. they all give false signals."
"The moving average timing strategy makes the majority of its money by avoiding large, sustained market downturns. To be able to avoid those downturns, it has to accept a large number of small losses associated with switches that prove to be unnecessary. Numerically, more than 75% of all of MMA’s trades turn out to be losing trades."

Straight SMA has too many sell signals. Better is GTT timing which looks to two FRED statistics of the economy to decide when it ignore an SMA sell signal.
IMHO