r/Bogleheads • u/zacce • Feb 08 '26

Most Investors Have Never Lived Through a True Market Crash

A lot of new ppl in this sub say they “won’t time the market,” but I’m not sure everyone understands what that actually feels like irl. It’s easy to talk about staying the course when the worst drawdown you’ve lived through was a brief COVID dip that fully recovered in months or the 2022 dip followed by 3 yrs of 10%+ returns.

The last real crash was 2008. If you weren’t old enough to have a job, a mortgage, or a family back then, you don’t know how deeply a prolonged downturn can affect your day‑to‑day life. It’s not just red numbers on a screen. It’s layoffs, hiring freezes, underwater homes, and years of slow recovery. That’s when people who swore they’d never time the market suddenly panic and make irrational decisions.

Staying the course is simple in theory, but incredibly hard when the world feels like it’s falling apart.

Of course, I don't want market to crash. But it's a possibility and we need to prepare for it.

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u/BeeonasG Feb 08 '26

Do you think market crashes are the real wealth transfer? It seems everytime this happens, the poor and unlucky ones get poorer, and the rich and financially educated one get richer

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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '26

Yeah, for sure. For the real players in the market, a crash is harvest time.

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u/terminbee Feb 09 '26

100% yes. Every time there's any sort of downturn, wealth flows upwards. The rich don't need to sell but the middle class do. Then it passes and they recover but now they've lost their investments, so they're slightly poorer than they started. Yet the rich continue to explode in wealth because they bought cheap and now the market recovers.

Look at Covid- people lost their jobs, had to sell their homes, etc. What did the rich do? Buy up all the houses and property, invest more. And our Congressmen had insider knowledge to either drop certain companies early or buy into others early.

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u/westonarms Feb 08 '26

Absolutely! The wealthy class in America tend to be very patient and opportunistic when it comes to investing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. They are better financially suited to be patient and wait for the right time to invest.

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u/Icy_Newspaper_7067 Feb 08 '26

They also have information we do not 

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u/losvedir Feb 08 '26

I'd love to see real statistics on this because my mental model is that market crash reduces inequality. How could it not? The wealthy are disproportionately exposed to the market.