Subject: Re: Ot scaling back stocks
But my experience has been that trades in and out of cash have rarely produced significant gains or losses. The entire benefit for me has been concentrated in having avoided disaster in 2001 and (especially) 2008. There is, needlessly to say, no guarantee that I will be three times lucky.

Curious how you define "disaster".

In 2008/2009 we went from comfortable financial independence to not being, but since we were not living off the portfolio and work kept coming in it didn't make a difference to us. 15 years of portfolio growth later, a 50% drop now would be painful, but not actually a disaster.