RE:some posting here are living in a vacuum, as the problems Predicting a stock market crash or the onset of a bear market is a fool's errand. Macro forecasting is notoriously difficult due to the complexity of the global economy, and there is virtually no one with a consistent track record of making correct forecasts about GDP, interest rates, unemployment, exchange rates, inflation, or stock indices. Before every crash there are always some who made reasoned arguments that it would happen, but they were generally early, and those who got the timing right were basically lucky. The fact that stock valuations in the US are near all-time highs is not a sufficient condition for a crash or imminent decline. In fact, valuations have been very high for years. But they are not so high in other countries, including Canada, Europe, Japan, China, and many emerging markets. The US has large and dynamic capital markets, but they are not the only ones. There is a tightening cycle underway in the US, but this is not worldwide. Just as plausible is that there will be sector rotation into Europe and emerging markets, and possibly a stagflationary period brought about by Donald Trump's idiotic trade wars. I say idiotic because opposing free trade is essentially anathema to the material progress of human civilisation. It is a lose-lose proposition. He may think he is helping America, and maybe the poor economically ignorant populace will praise him for defending America's economy and he will gain in the polls, but it would ultimately be a blip on the wrong side of history. I digress. Inefficiency in trade causes cost push inflation without raising nominal GDP, which is stagflation. I must now, for the benefit of the incorrigible goldbugs and penurious mining permabulls, trot out the anecdote of the secular bull market in commodities and mining shares during a period of declining real GDP growth, rising inflation, rising unemployment, and falling stock indices in the United States from 1966-1982. But if there is a deflationary shock, as certain economists such as Russell Napier are predicting because of particular fragile pockets of credit in the world, balances of trade, and exchange rate adjustment mechanisms, then nearly all securities will decline, so the best things to hold are no stocks, corporate bonds or commodities, not even gold; but cash, and, even better, T-bonds. Most who think they know what will happen, simply have a hunch, a gut feeling, and that is worth zero. If you think you have an ironclad train of logic which sees a sequence of dominoes falling and causing some great inevitable market event in the future, then I would like to hear it. Even such a thing is subject to the vulnerability of being obliterated by the inherently chaotic nature of global economies and capital markets. The fact is, nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.