<prompt> Human: Im fully willing to accept any amount of flaming for this completely ignorant post. I just got done watching The Big Short, and the movie has me pretty paranoid about my retirement savings. Right now I have an Roth IRA that I come close to maxing out each year. Every dime of that money is invested directly into a target date fund. I also put 6 of my income in my 401k that I believe is invested the same wayVanguard 2055 Target Retirement. Now while I will try not to go too far off the deep end with talks of a similar situation to what occurred in 2008 I was very concerned about the conversation between Mark Baum, and an Asian gentleman who I believe was a CDO manager. In this conversation we find that the man says that he works for his investors, while also disclosing that Wells Fargo essentially provides him with Clients, money to run his business, and the funds they wish to sell. Forgive me if Im misquoting some of this as Im drawing this up from memory.That discussion made me think about bias in the industry and how I have a decent amount of cash invested in things I barley understand. How can I ensure that my money is invested in a diverse non-biased way? Its a scary thing to entrust your entire future in a complex system that would seemingly take years just to learn the surface of.  <response>: The fraud that The Big Short talks about was constrained entirely to tiny slices of the US bond market.Look at how Vanguard allocates your money Almost 90 of your money is split between Total US Stock Market and Total International Stock Market. You essentially own a tiny piece of almost every public company in the world. The other 10.1 of your money is in bonds, 7.1 in US and the rest in international. Look at how Vanguard allocates the US bond money More than 60 of it is parked directly at the US Treasury, or is invested in government-guaranteed mortgage loans. Only 2 of it is in Commercial mortgage-backed which is what The Big Short was about, and these days the type of fraud that the movie illustrated isnt really possible.2 of 7 0.1 of your investments. You have nothing to worry about. 