The best money I've ever made, and the most comfort I've ever had, was "betting against the USA." In December 2004 I took my retirement fund out of bonds and threw it all at emerging markets funds, FOREX funds and every other aggregate measure I could find that basically said "foreign economies are going to grow faster than the US economy." It was partly luck (my knowledge of the world is imperfect) and partly skill (my knowledge of geopolitic is greater than my knowledge of individual companies' performance) and it paid off about 70% over three years. In September 2007 I took my retirement funds out of emerging markets and forex because I no longer felt that anyone could predict the general direction of the market; the research I had been doing predicted the collapse of the housing bubble but not much else. I responded by putting my money in a ratcheting index fund, so when the S&P dropped a month later I didn't lose a dime. It's still there. It's safe to say that I'm much more interested in "not losing money" than I am in "making money" which I recognize as an excessively-conservative policy for a 37-year-old. However, I just don't trust any system in which public opinion trumps data.