I've found the gap in time from when I've pulled out of the market to being mostly reinvested is far shorter than memory of the event.
Going back and looking at dates, at the onset of the pandemic I was out of the market for only three weeks although I had thought is had been a few months.
Leading up to the banking collapse was a couple of years which seemed more like five, and only because the collapse took far longer to manifest than I has anticipated. It was like watching an auto wreck in extreme slow motion.
I'm not a clever trader in response to stock movements without a underlying event most are ignoring. For myself I call that "over trading", as during the tech bubble. I thought I was doing well trading until I compared it to what I would have achieved just holding the stocks I was trading - putting in extra work to achieve less didn't seem as clever in retrospect.
We've run out of other people's Social Security taxes needed to subsidize our low income tax rates.
