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If you bought in 1929 just before the downturn you had to HODL for 30 years until the price was back where you bought it
If you bought in 1966 just before the downturn you also had to HODL for 30 years until the price was back where you bought it
Don't believe it? see for yourself:
http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart[...]
You're reading the chart wrong.
1) You used inflation adjusted prices which utterly inflates the recovery time and actually shows how much fiat -- not stocks -- lost in value during your given timeframes. Ignoring inflation you get a recovery times from 1929 - 1954 and 1965 - 1972. Not nearly as dramatic as you make it seem.
And the first timeframe included a world war.2) You're ignoring dividends. Crypto doesn't have them, but you can't assess stock prices without looking at dividends as well. Accounting for dividends aforementioned recovery times shorten even more.
gg
My god you don't understand inflation do you?
Taking inflation into account makes the payback time much longer.
Buying at - for example - 1000$ in 1929 and then getting 1000$ back in 1959 is still a de-facto loss due to inflation as the same 1000$ is worth less in 1959
and much much worse for the period 1966-1996 which includes the period in the 1970s of very high inflation