One of my coffee buddies this morning related that very same sentiment. A 72 year-old-retiree, who was told years ago by someone that “the market is rigged,” and kept his money in CDs. As a result his nest egg of probably less than a million (which ain’t bad), would be valued many-fold that amount had he fifty years ago systematically invested in equities.
They did quite well, but I shudder at what they could have accomplished by even just moving 10% of their CD money to equities in the '50's to today.
And they are not alone. I am old enough to remember that 70-80% of those born at that time were ghastly afraid of the market, due to what happened in '29 and afterwards.