Last month marked the 30th anniversary of the 1987 stock market crash, an event that proved significant for reasons few understood at the time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had been below 800 in August 1982. By January 1987, it was enjoying a five-year bull market and reached 1900, then exploded further to the upside, rising to 2700—a 40% climb by August (though stocks were still far cheaper than they are today).

Then in September of that year, the stocks started to wobble like a mountaineer enjoying one cocktail too many after reaching a peak in high altitude.

Computerized quant-driven strategies were suddenly playing a major role in daily trading, and technology was colliding with arcane, calcified regulations. To no one’s surprise, the regulators were the losers.

Then in four days in mid-October, markets lost about 35% of their value. Some viewed it as a canary in a coal mine signaling another depression. Pious liberals at Newsweek tut-tutted about the end of Reagan administration greed and predicted a bunch of twaddle would displace it. People, who were guilty of saving, investing and hoping stocks appreciated, would stop spending, stay at home and watch television, these savants claimed.

Instead, the economy barely blinked. Equities would take two years to recoup their losses. Then a real recession, mild statistically but painful psychologically, was triggered by the savings and loan crisis and the first, brief Iraq war. For investors, the real lesson was to stay in equities as the bull market moved into an even more powerful phase in the 1990s.

If the 1987 stock market crash was a non-event when viewed against the arc of economic history, the same could not be said of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Rapidly approaching its 10th anniversary, the financial crisis was the most severe economic downturn Americans under age 70 had ever experienced, and its aftershocks are still present. When it comes to equities, the real lesson of the 1987 crash is more pertinent today than it was then.

The benefits of this latest expansion were distributed unevenly. Unemployment may have returned to pre-crisis levels, but many people sidelined during the crisis are still scarred whether or not they have recovered economically.

In the 30 years since 1987, the American economy has become financialized to a degree few would have imagined in the 1980s. It’s not just stock trading that has been computerized. Priceline’s name-your-price flights, eBay’s auctions and Uber’s surge pricing have fundamentally changed the way consumers spend money.

Many will tell you it’s not the cruise they signed up for. It’s another reason they need financial advice more than they ever did.