When Elisabeth Kübler-Ross penned her 1973 book On Death and Dying — which identifies the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — she was concerned about cancer patients and their loved ones, not the psychology of shock-weary investors who have watched a financial meltdown infect world economies and bleed billions from their savings and portfolios.

But grief, it turns out, follows much the same curve regardless of what has been lost. From the onset of the subprime credit crisis in mid-2007 until the autumn of 2008 when the teetering house of financial...