What we can say definitively is that we know who ended up holding the bag as the bubble exploded: average investors. Over the course of the year 2000, as the stock market began its meltdown, individual investors continued to pour $260 billion into U.S. equity funds. This was up from the $150 billion invested in the market in 1998 and $176 billion invested in 1999.67 Everyday Americans were the most aggressive investors in the dot-com bubble68 at the very moment the bubble was at its height—and right at the moment the smart money was getting out. According to Barron’s journalist Maggie Mahar,
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