use 16 to calculate how much is enough for retirement, page-35

yeah, fair enough. i wasn't suggesting that i'd get great returns from a brilliant use of cash by picking market bottoms, more that the cash would be a buffer alongside the growth assets and hopefully do some tuning of cash levels according to whether the market seems cheap/expensive. so, it'd be the growth assets that would give me performance above 4-5% and then cash giving some downside protection.

the second part of your comment reminds me of another myth that gets repeated a lot now and maybe feeds into this conservative push. it goes like this;

"you shouldn't buy stocks or managed funds because it's not possible for you or a fund manager to try and buy good companies at the right time and get a better return than the market average over time."
"oh, how do i know that this is a fact?"
"because warren buffet says so"
"oh,what should i do then?"
"you should put into everything into index based ETFs, they are cheap and average and that's the best you can ever expect."
"oh, how did warren buffet become incredibly rich and famous"
"by buying into good companies at the right time?"
"wtf?"