The way they steal the money is they know its going down because they plan to make it go down tell their buddies to sell, and you buy it from them. If you just bought they stole your money. They also buy it up when its low and sell it when they let it go up again. So if you don’t panic buy when it goes up and don’t panic sell when it goes down you don’t get fucked that badly. Unless you need to sell to pay for something, a position which you want to avoid being in (emergency fund, bonds when you get close to retirement etc). Just like the corona crash you only lost money if you sold. Moral of the story, don’t panic sell unless you foolishly have all your money in the market. This is my autistic opinion not financial advice