The market goes through boom/bust cycles. This particular bust cycle is being precipitated by shitty political policies. You should be studying the prospectus for the stocks/products you are buying through your 401K. The prospectus tells you what company stocks make up the investment product, and will show you the long term performance. If you’re worried about US markets, you can move your some of your holdings into European/Asian stock products for a bit more diversity. In terms of risk, the stock market is riskier than the bond market, however bonds tend to preserve the purchase value over time rather than generate profit. The higher the risk, the higher the reward. What I have done is take my dividends/profits out of the stock side of the market, and use them to purchase bonds. This way I preserve the profit, and the original investment used to generate the profit stays in the risky part of the market to hopefully keep generating profit. Since the market is taking a big hit right now, now would be the time to buy, while the prices are lower, understanding that you are betting on a recovery which might not happen. Any financial advisor worth their salt would at the very least tell you to diversify your porfolio, as in don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. I would take this a step further to say, you should build up a savings account and not count on something risky like the stock market to be there for you when you retire. The stock market is just gambling.
My best guess is that you are from Iran? If memory serves, this got kicked off via the Anglo-Persian oil company, 51% owned by the Brits. (They go by BP now.) The company was a private entity that was treating the Iranian workforce poorly in terms of qualify of life and profit sharing with workers. The ruler in Iran was tired of their country and land being used to generate profits for foreign entities. The profit sharing with the company was renegotiated in the somewhere in the 1930s. (my memory is a bit spotty on the exact date.) In Narrator voice: The company did not abide by that agreement. During world war 2, the allied forces basically occupied Iran to secure the oil fields to keep supply chains intact during the war; so this would have been happening in the 1940s. This created a push for nationalizing the company and supply of oil, leading up to the 1950s and in 1951 is when Iran nationalized it under prime minister Mossadegh. There was lots of back and forth between the Brits and Iran, and threats of going to international court. The Shah was a bit more friendly to how business was being done between Iran and the Birts. This led to an attempt by the Shah to replace Mossadegh in 1952, and led to riots against the Shah and perceived foreign intervention. This failed. Mossadegh was pissed and eventually Mossadegh expelled the British embassy in October 1952. The brits cried to the USA, which led to the CIA to depose Mossadegh via the Shah, using underhanded bribery and corruption type shenanigans. This led to another 2 decades of Iran getting fucked by the brits and the USA, which eventually was a factor in the hostage crisis in 1979. Yeah, America was pissed about that. I was born in 1979 and have very early memories of Reagan saying shit like we won’t negotiate with terrorists. When Iraq went to war with Iran, the US was on the books as supporting Iraq. There was an embargo preventing the US from selling weapons to Iran. That didn’t stop the USA. They funneled weapons and training to contras in Nicaragua who would then supply Iran, simply because the USA didn’t want Iran to be influenced by the Russia and communism. This is not taught in American public schools at all. American history curriculum usually ends with the civil rights movement. This was all stuff I had to learn on my own after hearing about it first hand from my best friend who lived through the Iraq/Iran war in the 80s. Yes, we are the baddies.