If the market crashes. My expectation is for the S&P to keep going up to the moon. Maybe with a brief crash at some time, but it's got an entire Congress worth of corruption behind it now. Never bet opposite of people with the power to influence the outcome.
Look what happened with COVID: it crashed, but then politicians immediately and for a long time printed a shitload of money to make it stop crashing. This is the new normal.
Market indices are already at all-time highs, and the Federal Reserve is indicating it may cut rates due to inflation being measured as negative (no matter how it feels in reality for you and I) and the USA is about to have the most pro-pump-and-dump run-the-country-like-a-business president ever (for the second time and not being willing to ) who I completely expect will find even more and better ways to take money from the poor and give it to corporate investors.
Therefore, as much money as I feel willing to risk on this is in broad market index call options. I'm not trying to convince you to buy the same, just stating my opinion.
But the S&P500 has crashed, a few times in recent memory. It doesn't have to go to 0, it just needs to not be a perfect bull market all then time. If you're at 80/20 stocks/bonds and the market crashes your allocation might shift to say 70/30 so when you rebalance you're selling bonds to buy stocks. Its a way to perpetually buy low and sell high regardless of what the market does.
Well, they have nukes, but they're also morons. If that side of them materializes, they'll probably crash the currency value, which also raises S&P, and if you are leveraged, hopefully by more than the currency crashes.
If the market crashes you'll be heavy on bonds and able to buy the dip when you rebalance.
Check this out: https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Lar...