@Walt Let's take a gander at the S&P 500 again, shall we?
There are two dangers, and one bright spot for the S&P 500.
Danger number one is that about two months of $130 oil would throw the US into a recession. Even if trump and Iran are able to open the Strait of Hormuz, the warm up time would get it to $130 for at least a month(not two months, but still)... And that is assuming smooth sailing from here on out.
Danger number two is a little more inside baseball. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all looking at mega-IPOs in the next few months. They all need massive amounts of money for their AGI attempts, and private equity has run out of money to feed them. The three of them will be bigger than all the IPOs in the last decade. If you exclude Alibaba and Saudi Aramco's IPOs, the three combined will be bigger than all the IPOs in the last 25 years. Both Alibaba and Aramco had large foreign investment funds desperate to invest in them. These three will be mostly American. That is a large amount of money that will have to come from somewhere, which is probably the S&P 500. That is especially true when you look at the increases in borrowing from the US Government.
There is a bright spot for the S&P 500, but sadly not for the economy. All this stimulus will help the economy a bit, but it will mostly just increase the risk of inflation. Inflation may sound bad, but because the S&P 500 is the best hedge against inflation, it might turn out very good for the S&P 500.
I really do not have the foggiest when all these will hit, or how they will hit.
Over time I am making more than I am losing by using options to short the S&P 500. But not as much money as I would like. Along with the investments in a broad stock indexed fund, it is an OK strategy, which is to say not great.
My new investment is in call options on BNO and GUSH. Those are oil based ETF's, which I am using options to say will go up. If oil does go to $130, I should make a ton of money(to use an technical term for it

). They are all dated 100 to 150 days from now, so I will hopefully catch that.
But that is just a guess at this point.
Oh wow... almost 7,000 again. Sweet! When do you suppose it'll crash to "well below 5,000"?
If you ever get a 50/50 chance to make 20 times your money, take it. But do not over invest in it.
Everyone is more scared now, so the payouts are not as good, but there still are some real risks there. A 50/50 chance of a 10 times payout is still nice.
What is your investment strategy for the near to medium future?
You lost all your money on your last bet.
I have not come anywhere close to losing all my money. I lost more money in a day than I made in my 20's, twice, but also kept most of my money. I had more money in my Roth at the end of the year than at the beginning.
But if you do think I am losing all my money, feel free to invest in the opposite direction of me. Good luck.