That’s a good question and one everyone should be asking of themselves occasionally.
I am heavily into real estate in a weak area economically, but have done OK mainly because of the low interest rate environment. Have regularly refinanced into lower interest rate loans over the past 6 years. So cash flow is good because interest costs have been cut in half. Appreciation in values, not so good.
I am not at all into the stock market and wish I had been, since it is 2 1/2 times its low of about six years ago. Now it is so overvalued that I cannot imagine jumping in, which is exactly what I have thought for each of the past few years as it has gone up.

I think I’ll be investing heavily in home and land improvement with an eye toward renting the place out in the future

I’m not big speculating on currencies or most commodities I just don’t have a feel for it and know that by the time I figure it out there a lot of bigger guys already have and that puts me last to the party

[quote=moneymaker]Waiting for the big crash, then I’m all in.[/quote]

I know people that have been doing that with housing since 2004…

I’d be interested to know if QE in Europe will have a similar effect on share values in Europe. It looks likely that QE will happen and shares are apparently cheap(er). It also looks very likely the USD will continue to gain strength. €1 = $1.21 at the moment so back to it’s all time average. Apart from that I only hold out hope that one day an passive index fund might look like good value. Finding a 5% net return on RE is a challenge even in sober states, where prices haven’t shot through the roof so much as inventory has all but dried up due to investor activity. RE still holds appeal for me but it takes a lot time to find anything. I put all excess money for household items, replacements, etc into collectables, antiques, and art. Anything from Christmas cards, cutlery, step ladders, tools, furniture, you name it. I figure these will all hold their value better than cash and may even appreciate. You just need a good eye and patience. The other investment is in continually updating my knowledge with courses and reading to gain a better understanding of these uncertain times.

I think we are suffering a bit from not updating our investing yardsticks We are essentially still using criteria and expectations from 100 years ago. Sure we’ve shifted from dividend stocks to growth stocks accepting lack of dividends but we haven’t shifted our thinking from investment dollars being expensive to being cheap. The shift from retirement funds to 401ks and the growth of the state government funds have flooded investable products with cash.

Many years ago I read an article by a person saying stocks should have PEs that make them look more like bonds. I thought they were nuts at the time but I’m beginning to wonder if the stock market is more like the housing market with money being both cheap and plentiful.

Even if the market pulls back 30%. How fast will it come roaring back 40%?

Cut QE out and the market slows until the first companies put in a decent earning announcement.

Keep in mind there are twelve million high net worth individuals holding $46 trillion. And CalPers has over $260 billion representing 1.7 million with cash inflows of $12 billion a year for a net drain of about $5 billion annually. So while CalPers is a gorilla, they’re a dot in the aggregate

[quote=no_such_reality]I think we are suffering a bit from not updating our investing yardsticks We are essentially still using criteria and expectations from 100 years ago. Sure we’ve shifted from dividend stocks to growth stocks accepting lack of dividends but we haven’t shifted our thinking from investment dollars being expensive to being cheap. The shift from retirement funds to 401ks and the growth of the state government funds have flooded investable products with cash.

Many years ago I read an article by a person saying stocks should have PEs that make them look more like bonds. I thought they were nuts at the time but I’m beginning to wonder if the stock market is more like the housing market with money being both cheap and plentiful.

Even if the market pulls back 30%. How fast will it come roaring back 40%?

Cut QE out and the market slows until the first companies put in a decent earning announcement.

Keep in mind there are twelve million high net worth individuals holding $46 trillion. And CalPers has over $260 billion representing 1.7 million with cash inflows of $12 billion a year for a net drain of about $5 billion annually. So while CalPers is a gorilla, they’re a dot in the aggregate[/quote]

Exactly. Too much money concentrated into too few hands all looking for places to grow their money into more money, which means that price of investable assets are too high, relatively speaking.