Are you holding cash? The S&P500 is up something like 200% since 2008 so it's hard to understand how anyone's savings could have lost value in the past decade.
What you're talking about is investing+speculating, not saving. By the same logic investing in the S&P500 over the 1999-2009 decade would have been worse than cash. You save money, you invest/speculate to earn a return -- which requires taking on downside risk.
