[vevoo]

"How did people lose their retirement investments in 2008..following typical investment strategies?" Well, you can follow those strategies until fear takes over. I know of a graduate scholar that got scared, got her money out when you saw how her investment accounts went downwards. You keep the cash, fearing that if you invest again you will loose all. You see how the market goes up, but you do not believe on it again. Or the sunk cost fallacy...or risk aversion with an overestimation of risk.

The more financial AND emotional intelligence you have the less likely you are to fall into such life.

But let's have empathy because the majority of people have less financial intelligence and cold blod as the average hn reader. Let alone the chance of earning a very good salary for a few decades.

[markshead]

I'm not trying to downplay the plight of people who lost a lot of money in 2008 and I'm not trying to say "well it is their own fault" to trying to justify not feeling bad for them.

However, I think it is entirely reasonable to assume we will someday experience another similar event. If there was something about this event that caused some people who were following sound retirement investment strategies to lose all of their savings, I wanted to know about it. That is why I was asking.