We are innately averse to pain as human beings. If we burn our hands on the stove, we learn to never put our hands on the stove again.
This is part of the reason of why it is so difficult to become a successful long term investor – over a long period of time, the likelihood of anyone losing money is almost a foregone certainty. No one has ever entered the markets and not lost money to it.
Such a problem becomes exacerbated when you consider how to teach an Early Retirement Masterclass. Retirement entails relying on dividends/bonds for the long term where the retiree is almost always jobless whether by choice or by circumstance. This means losses in the stock market can be perceived to be even more worrying or painful.
The answer to such a question can be found in the simple application of statistics, and performance psychology....