I don’t think I said there is never a scenario…

Regarding passive investments in traditional asset classes, I said this:

Second, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that using leverage in a passive portfolio simply doesn’t make financial sense. Sure. The median return rises. But I think we maybe add too much risk for too little reward. And the really outstanding outcomes like the 1933 scenario seem, well, pretty implausible. (You may conclude differently of course.)

Regarding the use of leverage in active managed alternative asset classes, I said this:

Using leverage in an actively managed investment (and here I’m thinking of something like direct real estate investment or a small business that you or you and some partners own) seems to make more sense. Especially if you don’t continually borrow more to maintain a high state of leverage. (I would say leverage is a big part of the reason that competent real estate investors often end up wealthy.)

No worries. Yes, you proved that leverage is risky. But, it leaves readers scared and thinking there is never a scenario where you can harness leverage responsibly.
Here’s a good writeup:
https://earlyretirementnow.com/2016/07/20/lower-risk-through-leverage/

Gosh, sorry, I don’t understand your comment.

The post–which is what I think you’re criticizing–discusses how to use cFIREsim and FIREcalc to understand how portfolio leverage impacts returns. I think it does that…

“To me, these seem like the same situation but perhaps I am missing something….”

Brian, I agree. They seem like the same thing to me, too…

Interesting post and I generally agree with your conclusions. However, here is an interesting mind-trick I’ve observed related to your second conclusion. If you ask financially savvy people if they would willingly borrow money from the bank to invest in index funds, they would likely say no. If you ask the same people whether it makes sense to make additional payments on their mortgage, or invest those extra funds in the market, many would argue that investing those extra funds makes more sense since average market returns have historically exceeded recent mortgage interest rates. To me, these seem like the same situation but perhaps I am missing something.