Looking for suggestions for relatively safe instruments if another crash were to happen
"One approach is to invest in ""allocation"" mutual funds that use various methods to vary their asset allocation. Some examples (these are not recommendations; just to show you what I am talking about): A good way to identify a useful allocation fund is to look at the ""R-squared"" (correlation) with indexes on Morningstar. If the allocation fund has a 90-plus R-squared with any index, it probably isn't doing a lot. If it's relatively uncorrelated, then the manager is not index-hugging, but is making decisions to give you different risks from the index. If you put 10% of your portfolio in a fund that varies allocation to stocks from 25% to 75%, then your allocation to stocks created by that 10% would be between 2.5% to 7.5% depending on the views of the fund manager. You can use that type of calculation to invest enough in allocation funds to allow your overall allocation to vary within a desired range, and then you could put the rest of your money in index funds or whatever you normally use. You can think of this as diversifying across investment discipline in addition to across asset class. Another approach is to simply rely on your already balanced portfolio and enjoy any downturns in stocks as an opportunity to rebalance and buy some stocks at a lower price. Then enjoy any run-up as an opportunity to rebalance and sell some stocks at a high price.  The difficulty of course is going through with the rebalance. This is one advantage of all-in-one funds (target date, ""lifecycle,"" balanced, they have many names), they will always go through with the rebalance for you - and you can't ""see"" each bucket in order to get stressed about it. i.e. it's important to think of your portfolio as a whole, not look at the loss in the stocks portion. An all-in-one fund keeps you from seeing the stocks-by-themselves loss number, which is a good way to trick yourself into behaving sensibly. If you want to rebalance ""more aggressively"" then look at value averaging (search for ""value averaging"" on this site for example). A questionable approach is flat-out market-timing, where you try to get out and back in at the right times; a variation on this would be to buy put options at certain times; the problem is that it's just too hard. I think it makes more sense to buy an allocation fund that does this for you. If you do market time, you want to go in and out gradually, and value averaging is one way to do that." "Nobody has a ""crash proof"" portfolio -- you can make it ""crash resistant"". You protect against a crash by diversifying and not reacting out of fear when the markets are down. Be careful about focusing on the worst possible scenario (US default) vs. the more likely scenarios. Right now, many people think that inflation and interest rates are heading up -- so you should be making sure that your bond portfolio is mostly in short-duration bonds that are less sensitive to rate risk. Another risk is opportunity cost. Many people sold all of their equities in 2008/2009, and are sitting on lots of money in cash accounts. That money is ""safe"", but those investors lost the opportunity to recoup investments or grow -- to the tune of 25-40%."
There are multiple reasons why this may have happened: 1.) I couldn't tell in your question whether or not you had already paid off the loan before requesting the rollover. But if the loan was defaulted - then the $9k left in your account is not distributable, but is there to pay back the remaining balance on your loan. The $9k will be treated as income, and will be taxed - you will receive  a 1099-R detailing the taxes you'll owe. I don't know why this wasn't done when they did your rollover distribution. Typically it all happens at the same time - but it can vary depending on the administrator. 2.) Do you get some type of safe harbor discretionary match, or profit sharing contribution? If so - perhaps this contribution was made after your account was liquidated. So now there is residual money in your account and it is treated as a new distribution, which incurs a new $60 distribution fee. 3.) Stock - if some of your investments were in stock - these take a few extra days to liquidate. Typically a TPA/Recordkeeper would wait until ALL of the funds are liquidated before issuing the rollover. But some companies may be shady and do it separately - incurring an additional $60 distribution fee. If this was the case - I would go to your former employer's HR and tell them whats happening and to start looking for a new 401(k) administrator! I hope this helps :-) Good luck! &gt;Not one of the components I listed did GM manufacture in the 1970s. Sure, if you were to look today, that list would be even greater including things like entire door assemblies, entire instrument clusters, even entire engines, but even in 1970 a huge amount of components were purchased rather than made.  Nor did I list the manufacturers of the BOXES that iPads are packaged in. (Nor the petroleum mining and refining that lead to the plastics used to mold the cases, wrap the wires, and shrinkwrap the boxes).  &gt;I'm not sure that this won't happen. If it does it'll create a much different society as we suddenly can't afford all the crap that we've become accustomed to. I think it's equally likely that the equities market and the huge profits created in the financial industry and tech industries, along with the dollar being the world's only reserve currency will prop up the dollar and give rise to the bipolar society of which I describe.  Highly doubtful.  Such EXTREME bipolar societies are VERY unstable. Note: My sister works for one of the largest clinical development, testing, and commercialization companies so I know some of the key issues but not all. This answer does not constitute advice on any particular stock or other instrument. This is mostly well researched opinion. The problem with biotech companies (and a few other areas of technology) is that a lot of money is spent, and debt incurred, on ensuring that products are effective and safe to go to market. At any stage these tests can fail and the product is essentially worthless. At this stage the developers will have learnt a lot about the drug and how it is as efficacious as it is and so the next iteration of the potential drug will be better and hopefully less likely to cause complications and harmful side effects. The process of gaining approval for this second iteration is just as expensive, if not more so, than the last. This means that they are spending a lot of money on the drug and, for small biotech companies concentrating on one or few drugs, will have little to no income generation to offset this. If the money runs out before they get the product out they are bankrupt even if the drug is perfect. A second issue is that they are not the only firm looking for a cure. They might have a very good drug that works very well but another company may have a better one in the pipeline that will either take their monopoly position or take all of their business based on the relative cost and efficacy. The longer it takes them to get through testing, the more likely it is that this will happen and the more likely it is that the competing drug will be first to market and receive all of the free publicity that goes with that. In this case the risk is that they have a product (eventually) but no market for it and so will again run out of money. Another consideration is what the cure is actually worth. Prevention and awareness is already reducing the number of (wealthy) western people who have HIV and so the market size is falling where the most profit can be made. In order to get any return on your investment a profit will be required. Where HIV rates are rising is in poor countries in Africa, Asia, and south America where the price at which people could afford to buy a cure is likely to be lower than even the break even price for the firm. In this case you have a monopoly and a drug that works but no one can afford to buy it for a price that you can accept and still make a profit. Biotech is a very risky, but potentially lucrative, area because there are just so many risks at every stage. Price volatility occurs on rumour and questionable statements from the company (who are always trying to be positive so that their funding doesn't dry up) and even relatively small trades can move the market a large amount as few people want to sell an investment with so much potential. There are also some charged political positions with regard to HIV and AIDS, so a shift in political power could also derail a biotech firm that is researching this kind of drug. The bad news is that foreign exchange is ultimately somewhat unpredictable, and analyzing the risk of these things is not particularly straightforward. I'm afraid I don't know what tools exist to analyze these, aside from suggesting you look at textbooks for financial analysis classes. The good news is that there are other people who deal with multiple currencies (international businesses, for instance) who worry about the same thing. As such, you can take a look at foreign exchange rate futures and related instruments to estimate what the market as a whole currently expects the values to do. The prices of these futures could be a useful starting point. "There are no risk-free high-liquidity instruments that pay a significant amount of interest.  There are some money-market accounts around that pay 1%-2%, but they often have minimum balance or transaction limits.   Even if you could get 3%, on a $4K balance that would be $120 per year, or $10 per month.  You can do much better than that by just going to $tarbucks two less times per month (or whatever you can cut from your expenses) and putting that into the savings account. Or work a few extra hours and increase your income. I appreciate the desire to ""maximize"" the return on your money, but in reality increasing income and reducing expenses have a much greater impact until you build up significant savings and are able to absorb more risk.  Emergency funds should be highly liquid and risk-free, so traditional investments aren't appropriate vehicles for them." I'm actually building a UK stock screener right now. It's more of an exercise in finding out how to work out technical things like MACD and EMA calculations, but if those are the things you're interested in, it's at  http://www.pifflevalve.co.uk/screen-builder/ As I say, it's more of a personal project than anything commercial, but it's fun to play with. RMA Journal is good. You should search for more in depth articles if you really want a good handle on all of the recent regulations. Dodd-Frank, CFPB regs, Basel II and the new capital reserve requirements and how that's affecting the industry. The irony about much of the new regs is that they are driving smaller lenders into selling their company because it is simply too costly to carry the staff necessary to ensure compliance; thus making the too big to fails even bigger. It's definitely broken window fallacy. The entire premise is that vehicle accidents cost money and productivity. If they can be avoided, we will be more productive. If we had technology that made car insurance obsolete, everyone in that industry could do another productive activity.  Textbook broken window fallacy.