You have defined a crash. This is an adjustment to crash levels.
Bingo. My gut instinct is that it will bottom out at around 11,000 to 12,000 and that will be the time to buy again. My deepest sympathies for everyone whose retirement accounts are in the market. However, if they have been in for a long time, they are just going to lose “air money” generated during the past 2-4 year bubble inflation. If they look at the long-term and what the stocks were purchased at, they will actually still be ok.
I’ve also seen some stories that this is a market mechanism for transferring wealth from the masses to the elites. For those who recently invested during the bubble, my deepest sympathies.
Go to the Yahoo finance page and look at the max graph for the Dow, you can look at the normal increase and pretty much draw a line through the highs and lows showing where it should be.