Looking for suggestions for relatively safe instruments if another crash were to happen
"One approach is to invest in ""allocation"" mutual funds that use various methods to vary their asset allocation. Some examples (these are not recommendations; just to show you what I am talking about): A good way to identify a useful allocation fund is to look at the ""R-squared"" (correlation) with indexes on Morningstar. If the allocation fund has a 90-plus R-squared with any index, it probably isn't doing a lot. If it's relatively uncorrelated, then the manager is not index-hugging, but is making decisions to give you different risks from the index. If you put 10% of your portfolio in a fund that varies allocation to stocks from 25% to 75%, then your allocation to stocks created by that 10% would be between 2.5% to 7.5% depending on the views of the fund manager. You can use that type of calculation to invest enough in allocation funds to allow your overall allocation to vary within a desired range, and then you could put the rest of your money in index funds or whatever you normally use. You can think of this as diversifying across investment discipline in addition to across asset class. Another approach is to simply rely on your already balanced portfolio and enjoy any downturns in stocks as an opportunity to rebalance and buy some stocks at a lower price. Then enjoy any run-up as an opportunity to rebalance and sell some stocks at a high price.  The difficulty of course is going through with the rebalance. This is one advantage of all-in-one funds (target date, ""lifecycle,"" balanced, they have many names), they will always go through with the rebalance for you - and you can't ""see"" each bucket in order to get stressed about it. i.e. it's important to think of your portfolio as a whole, not look at the loss in the stocks portion. An all-in-one fund keeps you from seeing the stocks-by-themselves loss number, which is a good way to trick yourself into behaving sensibly. If you want to rebalance ""more aggressively"" then look at value averaging (search for ""value averaging"" on this site for example). A questionable approach is flat-out market-timing, where you try to get out and back in at the right times; a variation on this would be to buy put options at certain times; the problem is that it's just too hard. I think it makes more sense to buy an allocation fund that does this for you. If you do market time, you want to go in and out gradually, and value averaging is one way to do that." "Nobody has a ""crash proof"" portfolio -- you can make it ""crash resistant"". You protect against a crash by diversifying and not reacting out of fear when the markets are down. Be careful about focusing on the worst possible scenario (US default) vs. the more likely scenarios. Right now, many people think that inflation and interest rates are heading up -- so you should be making sure that your bond portfolio is mostly in short-duration bonds that are less sensitive to rate risk. Another risk is opportunity cost. Many people sold all of their equities in 2008/2009, and are sitting on lots of money in cash accounts. That money is ""safe"", but those investors lost the opportunity to recoup investments or grow -- to the tune of 25-40%."
Look into commodities futures & options. Unfortunately, they are not trivial instruments. "No you brought up aluminum as an issue. I simply pointed out there is nothing unique or unusual about aluminum body panels. Insurers have known Tesla has aluminum body panels since day 1. What they did not have was sufficient statistics to determine how unsafe Teslas and their drivers are until now.   Once they had data to prove that Teslas have a substantially higher accident rate they raised insurance rates. If the accident rate was low they would not have raised the rates. The new information is not ""aluminum body panels"" but that Teslas and their drivers have a mich higher accident rate." Indeed.  10-20 years down the line who knows where the computing capabilities will be at. But for now, and the foreseeable future IMHO, there are simply too many variables involved to take a human completely out of the cockpit. I will still want to know that there are two sets of eyeballs looking out the of the cockpit and monitoring the gauges. "I think it is stated perfectly in the question, ""unforeseen critical needs."" You know you will need to buy new tires for your car, they are critical but not unforeseen. However, if a tree falls on your car and you need to pay the insurance deductible for the repairs it would be unforeseen. You should budget for the expenses you can plan for in advance like car maintenance and repairs. An emergency fund is for items that are out of the ordinary." Taking into account your POV I would recommend mostly goods that will be harder to obtain, precious metals (not only gold) and forex (although the forex aproach depends on some other country not having troubles with it's own economy which in a world as interconnected as ours by internet and all the new technologies doesn't seem likely)  i highly recommend silver which is cheaper than gold and is stable enough in the long term Someone referred to the bend as a living hinge, I've heard it referred to as a kerf-bend.  My office has a laser cutter and might be interested in putting it to use.  What kind of volume are you looking for?  If low-volume, PM me. Options are contractual instruments. Most options you'll run into are contracts which allow you to buy or sell stock at a given price at some time in the future, if you feel like it (it gives you the option). These are Call and Put options, respectively (for buying the stock and selling the stock). If you have a lot of money in an index fund ETF, you may be able to protect your portfolio against a market decline by (e.g.) buying Put options against the ETF for a substantially lower price than the index fund currently trades at. If the market crashes and your fund falls in value significantly, you can exercise the options, selling the fund at the price that your option has specified (to the counter-party of your contract). This is the risk that the option mitigates against. Even if you don't have one particular fund with your investments, you could still buy a put option on a similar fund, and resell it to another person in lieu of exercise (they would be capable of buying the stock and performing the exercise themselves for profit if necessary). In general, if you are buying an option for safety, it should be an option either on something you own, or something whose price behavior will mimic something you own. You will note that options are linked to the price of stocks. Futures are contracts whose values are linked to the price of other things, typically commodities such as oil, gold, or orange juice. Their behaviors may diverge. With an option you can have a contractual guarantee on the exact investment you're trying to protect. (Additionally, many commodities' value may fall at the same time that stock investments fall: during economic contractions which reduce industrial activity, resulting in lower profits for firms and less demand for commodities.) You may also note that there are other structures that options may have - PUT options on index funds or similar instruments are probably most specifically relevant to your interests. The downside of protecting yourself with options is that it costs money to buy this option, and the option eventually expires, so you may lose money. Essentially, you are buying safety and risk-tolerance from the option contract's counterparty, and safety is not free. I cannot inform you what level of safety is appropriate for your portfolio's needs, but more safety is more expensive. That's not unreasonable if you're working in reactor control safety, or an autopilot, and therefore it is considered worthwhile running multiple systems in parallel that cross-check each other.  I'm guessing you weren't...  Edit: Minor phrasing tweaks for clarity. I found the zephyr database, which does the job. Nonetheless if someone knows other (open) sources, be welcome to answer. "This is a stupid question.  Operating an elevator or train is very simple, and even a kid can do that. In elevator, just press the button for the floor you want. In a train, a ""gas pedal"" and a ""break pedal"".  If a ""mistake"" happens, at least in trains, it may kill few people on the train or something on the tracks.  An airplane is much more complicated, and if a ""mistake"" happens, a large section of town and buildings can suffer with many many deaths.  P/S: unmanned trains are only for slow-moving trains with small amount of people on them, e.g. in airports." Well, we work in the power markets. It might be overkill, but several have PhD although there have been a few with masters or CFA charter. The Risk Operations group is less theoretical and a bit less stringent. I know the society of actuaries has a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst credential that might be useful. A kohler power solution generator gives numerous ideal conditions to the customer. Exactly when your home loses control for whatever component, the generator will rapidly and by and large switch on and offer your home the power for essential things, for instance, circulating air through and cooling, lights, and whatever else you may require. This can be to an incredible degree pleasing in emergency situation conditions. Among the remarkable parts of current generators is that they are delivered to rapidly switch on when power is lost. This shields you from hoping to vacillate around neglectful or leave your family in an emergency circumstance. With such advances being developed you not have to reel around careless endeavoring to find electric lights just to find that they have no batteries or stress over fire lights which may realize flares. All these unneeded things are not exactly as of late hazardous however risks to your security are. A crisis control arrangements may demonstrate security for your family in an occasion that power takes off. Yeah get a little raspberry-Pi sized device, drown that fucker in epoxy so it can't be removed and tampered with by some smart arse, and put some sort of shielding in there too, job done. If you need to update the software, beyond a certain point, slap in a new module. No cash is necessary for most people.  In the modern day in the US there is no need to keep paper currency around for emergencies; any sort of emergency that knocked out all of the ability to use plastic (ATMs, credit cards, etc.) for an extended period of time AND knocked your bank out of service would be of the level that cash  might not have any value either. Your $100 of cash for natural disasters is likely more than enough, and even that I wouldn't necessarily consider a vital thing in this day where even a major natural disaster probably isn't going to have too much impact on the financial sector outside of the immediate area (that you should be exiting quickly).  Keep however much cash around that you need for day to day cash expenses, and that should be enough. The level of emergency that would suggest cash being needed would probably need more than you'd actually want to keep around, anyway - i.e., a complete collapse of the American or World financial system would imply you need months' worth of cash.  That's just not feasible, nor is it practical financially.  You should have your emergency fund making at least a bit of interest - 1% or so isn't hard to get right now, and in the near future that may increase substantially if interest rates go up. It also would make you a substantial theft target if it were known you had months' worth of cash around the house (i.e., thousands of dollars).  Safes don't necessarily give you sufficient protection unless you've got a very good safe - commercial ones are only as safe as the ability to crack them and/or transport them is. Now, if you find yourself regularly out at 2am and run out of cash, and you live somewhere that ATMs don't exist, and you find yourself needing to pay cab drivers from time to time after a drunk bender... then I'd keep at least one cab's worth of cash at home. You have two questions - first - no, if you are above the deduction limit, then you still have a traditional IRA deposit but with post tax money, tracked via form 8606.  Second - If I read this right, if you cannot take the deduction, but can do the Roth, by all means, this is the 'no-brainer' decision. Makes no sense to deposit non-deducted to a traditional IRA if you can do Roth.  But - for sake of the full picture - if above the Roth limit, you still should make the post tax deposit (to the traditional.) If you have no pretax IRA at all, you can convert immediately. If you have a mix, you have the option to convert piecemeal paying the tax on the pro-rated amount the pretax represents.