[quote=deadzone]Look at a chart of the two most recent market crashes, in 2000 and 2008-9.

When the market crashes, it’s going WAY DOWN. A few hundred point drop on the Dow any given day is a drop in the bucket in the big picture.[/quote]

The problem is those crashes started from a a couple 2% down days that were no big deal. That’s the problem with trying to time the top of a market. At the onset it looks like a bunch of no big deal corrections. Next thing you know you’re down 20% and don’t want to sell until things go back up. So you hold everything all the way down and sooth yourself with the tried and true you can’t time the market, it will always come back, and nobody could have seen this coming.

We’ll see what happens this time, but I expect most people to get caught in the next crash the same way they got caught in the previous two. Fear of missing out of the upside overwhelms their ability to take profits and wait for better opportunities.