If you are an American investor, or if you buy stocks of American companies, then on days like: 1893, 1907, 1929, 1962, 1987, 2001, you will experience how wealth can "evaporate". On those days - for instance, what people call "Black Friday" - stock prices plummet from sky-high to rock-bottom, their value equivalent to a blank sheet of paper. Wealth indeed "evaporates", including those considered as stable as Mount Tai. Moreover, every time the stock market crashes, there is always a group of people who disappear from the stock market - some go bankrupt and never recover, or simply perform free fall from high-rise buildings.