The last decade has been a period of extreme confidence.  All the markets continued to rise and rise for the majority of the decade.  We were told to believe in ourselves, we learnt that investing was a necessary behaviour to grow wealth, we made business decisions based on the high point of our revenue, and the environment was one where more wealth was created than any previous decade.  Some of the numbers during the last 10 years were staggering – there were more new cars sold, there were more property transactions, there were more people in employment, the average earning capacity of an individual rose to record levels and more wealth was created in the last 10 years than in the previous 50 years.  So when you reach such highs, why did the sudden drop come so unexpectedly? 

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