Without giving up too much information. Recently, I was very disappointed to hear a family member, who had their money out of the market for 18 months as well because of the same outlook, caved and put the money back in the market.
Out of being stubborn, I won't put my money back into the market being above where I took it out. Also, I'm seeing more and more financial media articles saying "Bull market" "Recession off the table" "forget about soft landing, no landing needed"....they want all the money off the sidelines to come back in so they can rug pull at some pre-determined time.
They've all probably colluded and agreed to not margin call each other right now. The leverage each of these institutions have across the table is incomprehensible.
I was in the market a long, long time and learned very hard lessons. On of the most important is not to believe what the so called experts write. I think more often than not, the experts hope for an influx of buying so they can mitigate losses. Another lesson learned the hard way is, buy when everyone sales. Just before the dot com bust I kept watching many tech stocks soar and bought several. One was called egghead. For several weeks I watched the price skyrocket and caved to temptation. I forgot exactly how much I bought, but it was substantial. Within about two weeks, the company went broke, I lost everything. Luckily I held Sun Microsystems and a few others, which cushioned the blow, but thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. For me to jump back in with both feet, the DOW will need to drop to pre scamdemic levels, about 27000.
If I were much younger, it would need to drop to 30000. There are tons of people that need to start paying on student loans again and we still have a lot of free scamdemic money floating around. The commercial RE market is starting to crack and WHEN China takes over Taiwan it will be catastrophic for the market. IMO the only thing holding the residential RE market together is nobody wants to give up a 3% loan. Remember both Powell and Yellen said inflation was transitory and both still have jobs. I live in Idaho and help wanted signs are everywhere, even fast food is paying $18 per hour with a minimum wage of 7.25. Cash is king!