Personal Finance and Investing

I shifted 14.5% of my investible assets from fixed income to stocks.

I very well knew it could go lower, a lot lower. I very well knew that it may be years to get back to where it was. I may very well have egg on my face for many years. Such is the nature of long-term investing.

But the historic track record of buying equities when they are on sale is stellar.
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html

Compare to the fixed income alternatives.

I also bought a very broad-based mutual fund. (I would never do something like this with an individual stock or a handful of stocks.)

The stock market periodically sets new all-time highs. It has never set a new all time low. It has recovered from every bear market every time and gone on to a new all-time high.

For example, over the past 30 years, ending Friday September 23, the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund (including reinvested dividends) has gone up 15.4 fold, a 9.6%/year annual average return. That's a doubling on average every 7.6 years.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VFINX/history?p=VFINX
The Adjusted Close column includes reinvested distributions