>if you were a typical investor I’m not sure what “typical investor” means in this context. Shoveling money away in a diversified account and never touching it

>if you were a typical investor I’m not sure what “typical investor” means in this context. Shoveling money away in a diversified account and never touching it? Investment practices aren’t static and have changed quite a bit over the time measured. Even if investment practices were static you still need to factor in human emotion to investing. It’s easy in retrospect to see “If I kept my money in a diversified market I would have received +x% over y time”. But humans don’t think this way. Day to day events have much more influence on how someone makes a decision than long term forecasts. The Great Depression wasn’t just a slow down to our economy, many people believed capitalism was coming to an end. This happened weeks after one of the strongest bull market periods in United States history. If you were to travel back in time and tell someone on Black Tuesday “don’t worry, use dollar cost averaging and you’ll be rich in 90 years” they would think you were insane. This research also fails to recognize most millionaires in that time period were immigrants from poor families. Their frugality and tolerance for high risk entrepreneurial activities is what made them wealthy to begin with. Trustfund children rarely make as much as their parents. They settle for low risk careers like “doctor” or “lawyer” which pay high salaries but do not generate large sums of wealth. They also tend to be UAWs (Under Accumulator of Wealth). “A $250,000 per year doctor is an "Under Accumulator of Wealth" if his/her net worth is less than the product of their age and one tenth of his/her realized pretax income.” - The Millionaire Next Door