Subject: Re: Dividends
"We know that the worst case that happened in the past can definitely happen."
...
the question is how to prepare. China attacking or blockading Taiwan would trigger a shock as would war with Iran.

Personally, I take an odd inspiration from history: it's not the geopolitical things that you have to worry about. Most of them can't be spotted on a long term chart. e.g., if you look only at days the market was open, you can't even pick out Sept 11 2001. The two-trading-day drop was only the 6th worst in 2001, and was almost the same as the preceding two-trading-day drop Sept 5-7. The market rose during a surprising number of crises, for no obvious reason.

Rather, the bigger worry is a 15 year stretch of extremely low valuation levels. Or, given where we are today, perhaps even a 15 year stretch of historically average valuation levels would be crushing to a lot of people. That's probably even harder to predict than a nasty geopolitical shock.

Jim