I heartily agree with the sentiment that the US is due for a recession. I expected this even before the election. As EricL said, the market has been climbing since 2009 (it did have a long way to go from bottom, but still, a long bull market). Whether we are yet past the mean to which things inevitably revert, maybe a bit but doesn't yet seem excessive. I agree that if we have some sort of normalcy, maybe a year or two of business-deregulation euphoria before it crashes. In this scenario, the main issue is how the inevitable crisis is handled. When the market was crashing in 2008, unbeknownst to the public, the high-level financial folks in government were *losing their shit*. But they didn't get on TV or Twitter and scream that, they had meetings behind closed doors and didn't sleep much. Many years later when things had stabilized, they did interviews and wrote memoirs. Like high-functioning, normal people with a very heavy responsibility. Some of these people were GWB people, some were Obama people. In either case, the person who was publicly losing his shit was Kramer and that ilk, not high-level govt officials and certainly not the President. Few examples are more stark than FDR calming everyone down for nearly a decade. Presidents do not control the market; they can't. But they can help manage the fallout from market drops, using a variety of tools including their composure. So the problem with a market crash going forward, is that the person who can most help calm nerves is the least likely to do so. So I find that extremely worrying. Business likes predictability and dislikes unpredictability, so a lot of the latter is likely to cause problems, regardless of tax cuts and the like.
As for another possible scenario that I find more personally worrying-what would happen if there is a Black Swan-type event? The Sept 11 attacks triggered a recession that was probably on the way anyway. In that case, again, there were people at the top who at least had the composure and intelligence to steer the country through. If a terrorist attack happened now, or worse, Trump provokes some sort of more major war than the simmering Afghanistan misadventure, then I'm not hopeful about the market (or the country). My opinion of Trump is such that I would not be surprised at all if either of these scenarios happen.
I like the idea some have mentioned of allocating a higher percentage into internationals. I had already reduced my equity exposure to some degree after the election, in part due to the expectation of a coming recession and in part because I wanted to be a little more conservative as we approach FI. Even without that, if all you think about is Warren Buffett's "fearful when others are greedy" quote, pulling back a little on equities may be a good thing.
