Where to invest right now?

the US stock market is not the US and many of the S&P 500's components get the majority or a significant share of their revenue from overseas. you don't have to be bullish on the US to buy MSFT, you just have to be bullish on MSFT, capiche?

GDP is a lagging indicator, if you believe they will repeat in the future, that's fine, but markets are forward looking, and shares aren't priced in P/GDP, it's on the companies' earnings, CF, etc.

asking for advice from anonymous people will get you answers all over the map, people have different priorities and time horizons and risk tolerance than you, so take everything with HUGE grain of salt, and I'd go so far as to say IGNORE ANYONE WHO DOESNT SAY WHAT THEY OWN

what do I own? outside of emergency/short term funds which are all in cash (I value liquidity over a paltry 1% return on STFI), I'm 100% stocks, 60-80% US and about 50% of that is large cap (quality/dividend growth/value/GARP bias) and the other 50% of that split between mid and small cap managers that have long track records (though you'd be fine with an index fund as well). for the international piece, I outsource that as well to managers or index funds. given my title I can't divulge specific holdings since that could be construed as a recommendation, but the tenets of my philosophy are as follows

• it's impossible to predict events, so if your thesis depends on that, you're an idiot, don't forecast
• debt is poison, avoid it as much as you can (impossible to do 100%, but if a company doesn't have enough cash on hand to pay off all/most of their debt, I pass on them)
• valuation will not determine short term performance, but it has been shown historically to determine maximum CAGR, so keep in mind how expensive the stock is priced
• if a company hasn't already navigated 2 recessions, I pass
• if you pay a dividend, you must be growing it
• diversification is a hedge against ignorance, by spreading your bets while you cap your upside (I'll never have a year where I make 50%), you also minimize the probability of going bust or experiencing a loss from which you cannot recover
• on inflation, nearly impossible to reliably hedge over a time horizon that's relevant to me, so live below means, carry emergency funds, and ensure my household expenses are heavily tilted towards variable so I can cut back when needed
• buying early can be uncomfortable, but selling out can be fatal
• anyone who makes a market prediction must be judged by the totality of all of their other predictions before being taken seriously
• don't look a gift horse in the mouth, if you see a good holding and it's down without fundamental changes, buy it. it may go down more, so buy some more, markets can get more irrational than you think, but if you abide by the other principles, even if you're dead wrong you shouldn't go bust
• leverage has destroyed more wealth than it's preserved (noticed I didn't say created) and it changes the amount of patience you can have with your investments, DONT USE IT (this includes levered ETFs)
• approach backtests with the same skepticism you do with pundits, LTCM did backtests, many bankrupt banks/departments of banks used backtesting, etc., things that look really good in models can fail spectacularly in the real world
• reading investment news incessantly hurts, not helps your decision making abilities
• risk is not volatility, it's the probability of going bust/experiencing a loss from which you cannot recover
• active/passive doesn't really matter if your goal is financial independence. if your goal is matching benchmark, buy index. I've never seen anyone not achieve their goals because they bought a 50 stock portfolio that was handpicked by poring over value line reports and pseudo copying berkshire hathaway versus someone who just bought SPY/DIA. I've seen plenty of people fall short because they were a shitty spouse and got divorced, upsized their lifestyle with every raise, wasted money on big houses and cars and country club memberships they didn't need, didn't save enough, expected their income would never go down, etc., so always remember the measure of success is not whatever CAGR you show at death, it's financial independence. however you can get there, get there, but don't expect a savvy investment strategy to be more powerful than being financially responsible