[mandelbrotwurst]

Most (all?) retirement plans offer you some amount of choice in funds to invest in, and most companies of the sort you're describing are not included in many of the more popular indices. For example, WeWork was never in the S&P 500. Similarly, target date funds are one of the more popular investments options available as by default and/or recommendation in retirement plans. The first one I checked (Fidelity's Freedom Index) applies its U.S. allocation to large caps, which again means it does not include many of the companies you have in mind.

[tombert]

Fair enough, I guess if the company never makes it to the S&P500 or NASDAQ-100 you're mostly shielded from this stuff if you do the default funds. There are some questionable tech companies on the S&P, like Uber for example, but not as many and nothing as dumb as WeWork.

I have a lot of VTI stock right now, which if I understand correctly invests in basically everything in the America stock exchanges, though I guess an argument could be made that I should have known that dumb companies being included in there was always a risk.

Still, I don't have to like it, and I do think that a lot of these companies IPOing when they don't really have any way of actually making money is an issue waiting to happen.

[no_wizard]

VTI is a minimum ten year horizon type investment though, which is why it’s often praised by the Boglehead crowd.

Hold it for 10-30 years and it’ll be up and to the right. On average 10% gains in a year, though like anything it always fluctuates

[mandelbrotwurst]

Yeah, I hear you. It definitely feels like there's been a shift toward investing based on sentiment rather than fundamentals, and there's certainly an argument to be made that's not a good outcome for society.

Personally I feel like it's a bigger issue for individual investors that in recent years companies now IPO only in later stages or not at all and that much of the more profitable bits of the growth curve are now accessible only to the private markets.