Thanks to everyone for being so informative, cheers!

I started playing with crypto in May of this year, I've only made a few trades at this point and thankfully the experience has been positive overall (Apart from Coinbase, that place blows).

One BIG no no that I'm working on fixing now is that everything has been stored on the exchanges, so I'm in the process of organizing my wallet situation.

My question is, lets say you theoretically liquidate your entire crypto portfolio after a massive jump in the market and exchange for FIAT to wait for the next correction. Do you exchange for USDT and hold that like you would your other coins?

I ask this because when you deposit FIAT onto the exchange from your bank account, its just there in USD and obviously I don't want to leave my money sitting in the exchanges. I know its a really noob question but just wanted to be sure.

OR

If my assumption about the above is right, is there a better way? Because if you want to have FIAT on hand AND keep it safe, you have to deposit into the exchange > trade for USDT > store it > trade it back for a coin when you decide to buy in again. Thats a lot of transaction fees doing it this way.

Thanks!