One person who deserves credit for calling this very early on is Bill Fleckenstein. No matter what you think of him otherwise, he wrote column after column telling us that the whole real estate- derivative market was going to collapse in chaos. He was a very early critic of Greenspan and called him "Easy Al".
This is just a much bigger repeat of what happened with the S&L's in the late 80's early 90's. Then it was the S&L's, now it's the banks. Read up on that era. How could no one know? They'd already seen the movie. That was when that guy that wrote "Liar's Poker" was working on Wall Street.
Lots of people got the call right. the question is did the position themselves for it financially. Did they time it right. The market is so easy to call - until you have to watch your call being early and your stops getting hit.
I thought something bad would happen but didn't do anything about it. When Bear failed I told friends and family that we wouldn't hit a bottom until 2 or 3 more big banks failed. Imagine if I had put my money where my mouth was and shorted lehman, merrill, gs, aig, etc. Oh well, just gotta work with what I've got....I'm more of a reactionary trader, I don't pretend I have a crystal ball. Hopefully I'm right about this being the bottom.
Where's the option for saw it coming and lost money? In my case, it was just bad timing. (isn't everything?)
About five years ago, Capital One offered me a $37,500 uncollateralized loan. It was not personalized, it was a form letter. I am sure lots of people got it. I do not care if I had a good credit rating, that is a lot of money to offer anyone without collateral.
I saw it coming and was always the most pessimistic in the room. Unfortunately, I don't have the experience to apply my judgement. I had no clue how much the stocks would pull back, but I'm learning a bunch as we go along. I'll be ready for the next one. I've made a little bit of money, but I'm not really doing much either so my gain/losses would be low.