On the flip side, if you have six months or more of expenses in a brokerage account, you don't need to sell all of it day one. And if you sold a little at a time over six months during the covid crash, it wouldn't have been as bad of a loss.

And you need to compare that loss to what you would have had if you sat on cash for all of the time leading up to the crash too.

I'd be willing to bet keeping it cash would have been worse in most cases (depending on specific amounts and time frames and monthly expenses).