Because I am telling you there are going to be epic opportunities coming out of this current mess, can't wait!
It’s unfortunate this pandemic arose to be the proximate cause, but a sugar high in the markets followed by a 2008-esque crash is what every thoughtful person had to expect when we elevated someone who (a) was smart enough to get into the casino game but (b) so incompetent as to drive what is basically a license to print money into insolvency. Covefe-45 is the second worst disease afflicting the world right now. There are even worse leaders, but none of them have the reach and power of the globe's de facto Caesar, which every POTUS from FDR on has been.
But to your point, forward-looking fortunate people have systematically been taking money out of the market for a couple years now to build a cash position for deployment when the con man's sugar high wore off.
The guy wanted to buy mutual funds. ETF's are cheaper. Here's an example: my friend had $100k invested in mutual funds. I found the equivalent ETF's (with exactly the same holdings as his mutual funds). Over 10 years he saved $17000.
On paper or actually redeemed?
There's lots of hype around ETFs, but I'm not sure in the realm where funds are useful (i.e. passive index trackers*) that there's a cost advantage either way. Keep in mind that index funds redeem at their actual value, or "NAV" in jargon. ETFs can trade and redeem at some discount (or premium) to NAV.
*I don't understand the lure of actively managed funds, be they mutual funds or ETF. For funds I prefer to go super vanilla: a broad US index fund, a broad developed world ex-US index fund, and a broad emerging markets index fund. That holds for both retirement and investment accounts. I get the allure of stock picking. I dabble in some stock picking because I think I'm smarter than I am and imagine I need some agency in this field. I do not do much stock picking, because any individual stock purchases or sales must be cleared through my firm first (limiting agility) and also ethically I don't want to conflict out of a potential client matter due to personal financial interest. By contrast, active funds offer neither the long-term net returns of passive index funds nor the agency/bragging rights of stock picking, yet include substantial costs. For a really wealthy person a speculative venture capital fund or other managed private equity may make sense, but not for the typical upper middle class family. Index funds have their own structural issues that we will need to address through legislation at some point, such as creating collusion incentives across industries due to substantial common ownership. Regardless, even if steps are taken e.g. to dilute index funds' shareholder voting rights, that won't affect their basic value proposition.
