Ten years ago, several of the smartest advisors extant said that we were going to get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to invest in equities at prices similar to those Warren Buffett paid in 1974. All we had to do was wait for the S&P 500 to fall another 20 percent from 666.

These advisors were almost right. What they didn’t realize was that the moment was right then in March 2009. Like most of the world, they thought, with some justification, that the worst was yet to come. This was after nearly two years of bad news that began in the spring of 2007 with trouble in the housing markets. It got worse with Bear Stearns’ bankruptcy in March 2008 and seemed to hit a bottom with the Lehman Bankruptcy and AIG bailout that September. By March, Goldman Sachs had said the S&P 500 might fall as low as 400.

For Main Street, the recessions of 1973-1974 and 1981-1982 were nasty, but this downturn was of a different order of magnitude. The bailouts of the auto industry and AIG were enormous, but not historic firsts. That precedent was set with the airline bailout after the September 11 terrorist attacks. 

But what are the real lessons for advisors today? Most are trying to invest clients’ money so they can maintain their financial independence over a 30- to 40-year period, not beat some benchmark.

Brad McMillan, chief investment officer of Commonwealth Financial Network, believes today’s narrative about the March 2009 market bottom is missing the point entirely. In the last decade, the S&P 500 has quadrupled and McMillan worries that a smug air of self-congratulation is becoming pervasive among the investor class. Everyone is talking about the trip from bottom to peak when they should be talking about the trip from peak to peak.

McMillan isn't predicting another crisis or bear market. In fact, he expects the stock market—and its associated risks—to keep rising.

But like many, he thinks the 13.9 percent annualized gains for the S&P 500 for the decade ended December 31 are unlikely to be replicated in the next decade. Advisors looking for a better yardstick might want to take a longer, more pedestrian 20-year perspective. Over two decades, the S&P 500 returned 5.63 percent.

Timing the market may be a fool’s errand, but spotting once-in-a-generation bargain prices can at least turn the tables in clients’ favor. That sometimes means defying some of the smartest guys in the room. In early 2003, Bill Gross and Jeremy Grantham agreed that equities were cheap but each had their own, very convincing reasons why they were a long way from the bottom. Grantham maintained bear markets always overshoot—but they had already declined more than 50 percent from their peaks. Just because very smart people have powerful arguments doesn’t make them right.

Many experts believe equities today are reasonably priced. They may indeed be right, but corporate profit margins are at record levels and various valuation metrics, including the Shiller price-to-earnings multiples and other yardsticks factoring in today's low interest rates, are not far from all-time highs. Two years into his first term, a president is boasting about the stock market like a 1950s’ New York Yankee fan or a 1960s’ Boston Celtics fan—and like no leader before him.

“The bull case is that they [profit margins, valuation, multiples] all keep going higher,” McMillan says. And of course, they can. “We’ve seen it before, but how long can it continue?”

The reality is that March 2009 was more like a once-in-a-generation moment to invest than it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Other years besides 1974 and 2009, like 1982 and even 2002, also witnessed market bottoms. There are differences of course. In 1983 and 2009, it was virtually a straight-up vertical, whereas in 1974 and 2002 one had to wait nine years for an authentic bull market.

None of these bear markets were alike. McMillan recalls, there was a sense in the late 1990s that the dot.com bubble inevitably would burst. But between 2000 and 2002, unemployment rose modestly from 4 percent to 6 percent and most Americans outside of Silicon Valley continued about their lives with smaller portfolios but otherwise few changes. The September 11 terrorist attacks effected the national psyche to a greater degree.

In 2008, there was “a sense that everything was coming apart,” McMillan says. When the first TARP bill failed to pass Congress, there was pervasive despair that the problems were beyond the government’s ability to address.

“The government was physically flailing around because they had to do something,” McMillan says. “There was a sense they didn’t know what was going on.”

Ultimately, the public realized officials at the Federal Reserve Board and Treasury Department would be relentless in preventing the crisis from metastasizing. “It was similar to the 1930s. Once people sensed FDR was going to do something [throwing one program after another at the Depression], it didn’t matter,” McMillan says.

Glimmers of confidence began to reappear in March, 2009. Suspending mark-to-market accounting at the banks proved to be hugely helpful. As the dust settled, greed enjoyed a resurgence as investors realized how cheap equities were.

But the short-term lesson beyond investing revolved around an excessive reliance on government. People today assume “governments will do whatever it wants and whatever it takes,” McMillan says “We’ve now seen it in Europe and China.” The only thing that can prevent governments from rescuing the global economy is their own incompetence -- at least that’s how the subliminal message to the investing class is perceived.

That's a dangerous belief and not everyone shares it. Bailouts spawned a sense of outrage that sours our national conversations to this day. It gave way to the Tea Party on the right, and more recently, a rising Herbal Tea Party on the left.

Many people increasingly question the viability of fiat money (Bitcoin is just one concrete example), as well as the legality of the bailouts of financial firms that played central roles in creating the crisis. Among the financial establishment, JPMorgan just announced its own digital coin and others are likely to follow.

On the flip side, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which asserts it doesn’t matter how much money a central bank prints as long as it controls its own currency, is gaining popularity. MMT is widely seen as "garbage" by the Wall Street establishment but that same establishment no longer has the credibility it once did on Main Street.

In today’s political climate, how many people really think another Wall Street bailout could win support from Congress and a polarized American public?