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Ask anybody who has a 401K/403b plan and is near retirement what their biggest concerns are. There are a heck of a lot of boomers out there who are wondering how they are going to support themselves in the coming years. These are folks who were in their prime years during the Cold War and Vietnam, and probably also remember the Korean War and the Suez Crisis.

Do you seriously think that the majority of investors with 401K type plans didn't have the foresight to adjust the balance of their investments as they neared retirement so that they wouldn't be heavily leaning towards riskier investments? Do you have any evidence of this epidemic besides, perhaps, anecdotes?

The reason I ask this is that virtually all 401K plans provide ample information on how to balance risk in a stock program. And nearly all offer a multitude of investment options, with the exception of the corporate contribution which is often required to be in company stock.

Are you serious? Are you suggesting most retirement accounts moved from equities to fixed income securities, money market funds, or cash, in the nick of time? It's an empirical fact that most people stayed with stocks. Let's not use hindsight to debate what they should have done, because they didn't do that.