And for the average investor not on the cusp of retirement, this is irrelevant prognostication.<p>Buy, hold, wait. No one can tell the future and there's little point in trying.<p>As an aside, I do wonder if the rise of passive investing has worked to stabilize the market. After all, if you simply buy the market and hold, it takes human emotion out of the equation, which is almost certainly a strong factor in market volatility.