Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman
Equities are not always going and growing, far from it. From 1970-1979, the inflation adjusted return on the S & P 500 was -2.2%. From 2000 to 2009 it was -24.29%. Sure, it rebounds eventually, as does any other investment. That's my point: viewed from the right point in the timeline, everything can look good or bad. If the chaos monkeys in DC have their way June 1st, let's see what sort of growing and going we get over the next decade.
I hold my nose and place my bets in equities, but only because I have nowhere else to go that might generate enough ROI to fund a retirement. That, plus I don't want to be a landlord.
I am by no means suggesting that Collectable had a good idea--it seemed like a sucker bet to me from the start precisely because it was new and did not trade--but to suggest that there is some special fifth element to equities that differentiates them from other investments is to buy into marketing.
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If you cherrypick two dates schewed most to your argument out of a 90+ year sample size, you can make anything look like anything. It is immediately obvious at the quickest of glances at the chart that the market increases with time. Our entire economy is fundamentally based on this need, and has been for decades now. Here's the S&P chart, inflation adjusted, without cherrypicking dates. Not all investments
rebound eventually. Many do not, ask the beanie babiers. Many individual stocks will not rebound either. But the stock charts going up over time is the bedrock of world order and the economy.
If the stock market collapses, not has a bad year but collapses, the US dollar craters and law and order collapse with it. If it has too many bad years in a row, the end result is about the same. The market is propped up by the first world nations at any cost. States will do whatever it takes to keep the market going and growing over the long term.
If the card market collapses, a small number of people will experience fiscal pain. It is backed by no institution, no state, no people with actual power. It is obviously not the same. I know this is the board where pumper fantasies are popular, people are advised to empty their 401K's to pump cards instead and people have a vested interest in justifying their cardboard portfolios, but it is backed by nothing. That chaos is why it can pay off so big - and is also the risk. The stock market is the bedrock of our entire system. There is an absolutely massive fundamental difference.