Re:This 4×6 index card has all the financial advice you’ll e...
by Dylan16807 on Monday September 16, 2013 @10:00PM
(#6397158)
S&P 500 is higher now than it was then. Sure variance can hurt, but investment made from 1994 through 2004 would be doing fine right now.
Re:This 4×6 index card has all the financial advice you’ll e...
by Afforess on Monday September 16, 2013 @11:28PM
(#6397399)
You'd still be plenty wealthy due to dividends. Raw price indexes hide the true wealth.
Re:This 4×6 index card has all the financial advice you’ll e...
by dragonwriter on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @01:45PM
(#6400701)
> You'd still be plenty wealthy due to dividends.
Not all stocks offer dividends, and not all investors choose stocks with dividends (there are tax disadvantages to returning value via dividends rather than via appreciation of stock value.) Dividends offer a lower risk component of return, but typically in a diversified portfolio you can put some share of the portfolio in a lower-risk investment to have that lower-risk component.
So, for growth focused investors that aren't risk sensitive, dividends can be a negative feature, and for investors that are risk sensitive, they aren't essential as there are other ways to tune a portfolio around risk. This makes, at best, only a weakly positive net incentive, and more likely a negative net incentive, for firms to offer dividends.
It's only "conservative" if you don't understand variance.
The risk isn't in the value of the average. The risk is in the variation around that average. Like I said: if you invested 66% of your net income in the stock market in 1999, you'd be a long way from retirement today.
And if you're tempted to keep arguing this point, you might want to take a moment to consider how I know this. (Hint: the reality of a great many investors trumps your theories of how the stock market works.)