re: IMO life in this country doesn’t pencil unless you really make an effort to buy equities.

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The CPI has been 2.8% but the CPI excludes major expenditures like home prices, medical care, and college tuition which are all much, much higher than 2.8%. It’s really not a great metric as to the actual effect of inflation.

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True but they are correlated since interest rates and inflation are linked. Inflation goes up so do interest rates. Low interest rates is one of the main drivers of the "inflated" price of housing because people buy their houses on emotion based on what they can afford on a monthly note not the actual price of the house.

College prices have also skyrocketed because interest rates on student loans were extremely low and they were government backed.

If we get a prolonged period of higher interest rates we may start to see stabilization on the growth rates for higher education and housing assuming the higher cost of borrowing money will lower demand.

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Three consecutive of years high inflation coupled with higher interest rates has ushered in the "we hate the Boomers era."

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Everyone hated boomers long before that.

ETF gains today are driven less by underlying business performance and more by automatic inflows. When money pours in, prices rise—regardless of fundamentals. That works on the way up, but it’s not real price discovery.

The risk is structural: if those same flows reverse, selling becomes just as indiscriminate. Prices fall not because companies failed, but because the mechanism flipped. Liquidity vanishes when it’s needed most.

Layer on top currency debasement and rule changes, and the “returns” investors see may be largely illusory. You can be flat—or even up—nominally, while losing significant purchasing power.

The appeal of ETFs is simplicity and ease. That’s also the trap. Easy in means easy out—for everyone at once.

History shows that a 40% drawdown can take decades to recover in real terms. Most investors don’t recognize the loss because they’re focused on nominal prices, not what their money actually buys.

ETFs aren’t inherently safe—they’re momentum vehicles built on continuous inflows. If you rely on them, you’re betting the tide never turns.

And, Money Board

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Not the ones that are tied to an underlying index.

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Have you considered that Index ETFs don’t reduce risk—they concentrate it and hide it.

They force money into the biggest names simply because they’re big, not because they’re good. That’s not investing—it’s blind momentum.

When flows reverse, everything gets sold together. Correlations go to one, liquidity vanishes, and “diversification” proves to be a myth.

Indexing doesn’t make markets safer—it makes the unwind faster and more brutal.

Regardless, Cheers. Money Board.

Back to chicks and talking shite for me.

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Traffic Circle

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How pathetic to use AI to post on a message board lmao. frick off bot.

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ETF gains today are driven less by underlying business performance and more by automatic inflows.

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ETF inflows are a result of price, not a cause.

Most equity ETFs are cap-weighted and arbitraged tightly to net asset value. If an ETF's price drifts from the value of its underlying holdings, authorized participants create or redeem shares to close the gap. That arbitrage is precisely what enforces price discovery; it doesn't disable it.

E.g., Flows into SPY don't set Apple's price in a vacuum. Apple's price (and thousands of others) sets SPY's price, aggregated. So causality mostly runs the opposite of your claim. Just FYI.

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ETFs aren’t inherently safe

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No investment is. Some are safer than others. An ETF, being more diversified than an individual stock holding in the category, mitigates comparative risk.

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Interest rates should be set by the market

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FIFY

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ETA: when Japan happens here it will be so brutal

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Japan won’t happen here because of mass migration.

I've been dumping money into VOO and FDVV for years - some people shite on the high dividend etf's but that quarterly dividend is much higher than picking a stock. For example Walmart stock is $120 and pays 25c. FDVV is $60 and pays 52c with a .15% expense, not to mention how the value of the shares have risen 70% over the last 5 years. Pump money into those two, set up the DRIP, and watch that green line on your chart steadily rise.

Also, no matter what stock or etf you pick some WSB bro is going to give you a meltdown about how something else is better. Ignore it. Buy what works for you and is making money.

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ETF is just a mutual fund that trades through out the day more like a stock and has some tax efficiency advantages if held in taxable brokerage account vs a mutual fund.

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Can I do this myself and cut out the middleman?