Just think about this for a while. In 1969 the Dow-Jones Industrial average was a little shy of 1000. The price of an ounce of gold was about $41 an ounce. Today the Dow is a little more than 9300. Gold closed today at a little more than $990 an ounce. In 40 years the Dow is up about 10 fold while gold has risen 24 times. Thus gold has outpaced the stock market by 240%. Put another way the stock market has lost a huge part of its value to inflation.
When an adviser tells you to invest your retirement money in an index fund show him these data. The only way to make real money in the stock market is to get lucky and invest in a start-up company that hits the jackpot, like Apple, Microsoft, or Berkshire-Hathaway at their inception. The problem is that for every really successful company like the above there are thousands that don’t make it.
So how should one invest? How should I know? This site is about music and medicine.
