J.L. Collins

But let's just take that 90% as the reality.

And let's imagine that just before the crash, you had a million dollars invested.

And then that million dollars has now become $100,000.

And that's a very bad day.

But the depression was also deflationary.

So that means your $100,000 now has a lot more spending power than it did before the market crash.

So it's not quite as bad as it looks.

Now let's suppose that you were also one of the fortunate 75% who were still remained employed.

So famously in the depression, the unemployment rate was 25% and that's pretty damn terrible, but 75% of people just kept working.

And if you were fortunate enough to be in that majority and you continued on something like the simple path, which requires you to continue to buy shares, you would have spent the 1930s acquiring shares at bargain prices.

And when it eventually turned around, and it took a long time, make no mistake, but it didn't, by the way, it was not an on-off switch.

The market, and I forget the exact pattern, but it spiked up around, say, 33, and then again in 35, and it was very volatile in the 30s.

It would have been a wonderful buying opportunity if you'd had the courage and the discipline and understood that the market eventually would recover.

So let's go forward to times that maybe more people can relate to.

So in 2000, the market crashed, the tech crash, and it went down, if memory serves me, about 46%.

And then the market went nowhere for about a decade.

And then we had the debacle in 08, 09 that brought it down another 56%.

And I think most people looking at that would say, well, I wish I was on the sidelines.

But if I'd been following the simple path to wealth, I would have been continuing to invest in that.

And my answer to that is yes.