The wealthy disproportionately have their money invested in equities. The ultra wealthy are also typically highly concentrated in specific companies, think Jeff Bezos and Amazon. They tend to lose more when the market crashes.
There's a big difference between "no longer richest person in the world" and "lost everything".
When the market bounces back four years later, I'm now 1.5x wealthier than I was before the crash (thanks to all the cheap investments), and all I had to do was move some money around.
Edit: I’m not going to search through this book to find sources that fit some criteria you’re looking for. Get off HN comments, read a book, and learn some financial history lessons.
Edit: I've now read a few reviews and summaries of Devil Take The Hindmost. Its subtitle is "A History Of Financial Speculation," and it appears that its subject matter is not focused on ultra-wealthy persons with diversified portfolios being ruined by market corrections, but specifically speculators and frauds. At a glance, it doesn't look particularly relevant to this conversation.
I'd prefer an example that isn't somebody who wound up in prison.
They can declare bankruptcy and be free from all debt whereas your average college student cant escape.
Should we expect to see students jumping off of buildings soon ?
Yes, but the implication of OP is that these ultra-wealthy are crashing the system so they can then buy up everything around them. Where is the data to support this? The rich suffer during a recession too; no one is claiming they end up on the streets.
I believe we're thinking of different definitions of the word "suffer." The qualitative difference to which I refer is that for one class of people, the "suffering" is restricted to numbers on ledgers going down, and for another class of people, said suffering can literally involve ending up on the streets.
Furthermore, someone else in these very comments is claiming the ultra-wealthy can wind up on the streets as a result of market forces.
Have you checked the Oxfam reports? When you take a look at the last years, there is very clear trend. If it continues like this probably in few decades the richest one percent will own as much as the rest 99%.