I guess that why the "advice" I've always gotten is that when you are young(er), you really shouldn't be putting a majority of your stuff in a low yield bank account/conservative investment. More so in this environment. Plus as a younger person, you have a much longer time to recover should any controlled risk you take goes south. Of course this "advice" usually comes from a mutual fund "advisor" or "broker "that's trying to sell a hot stock tip or mutual fund, but I guess at least in the spirit of things, I don't disagree with that. The only hard part is finding the other things that does better than the low yielding bank account consistently. The other hard part is one's own comfort in dealing with situations when you're wrong and you take a loss. No ones right all the time.
The story would be different for older folks in the late 40ies, 50ies, or 60ies+, where in that case you have considerably less time to recover, so having more things in cash/cd's to me would make sense, because you can't afford the risk toward your years of retirement.
