actually helped a lot, for example, value stocks were deeply discounted at that time. The good examples are energy stocks and Birkshire Hathaway stock. On the other hand, diversification (only in equity stocks) didn't help that much in 2008/2009 crash. Well, if you could diversify your portfolio into bonds, especially those long term bonds, you shuld be doing very well. For example, last year S&P 500 return was about even while the return of average TIP bonds was about 18%, very impressive.
I guess the issue here is, what's true diverification. I have to say, it is much easy to say it than really implement it. On the same note, we all know portfoio rebanlance is very critical. However, how to rebanlance it efficiently is a totally different story.
