That's not to say that your startup isn't a better investment, though.
Maybe it's not the new normal, and maybe stock markets will start rising again as they have historically, but when you see a lull this long, it at least suggests the strong possibility of a pattern break.
It really makes me wonder about investing my savings into my tracker fund when I saw that. I'm in the UK, and my guess is, due to very tight correlation between the markets we did the same sort of performance.
So long term, market beating, savings beating growth, is not assured. Especially not in "developed" countries. If you think the GDPs of Western countries is going to start increasing (significantly) any time soon, please explain why!
So if it isn't assured, I've been looking into index tracked funds in other markets, particularly APAC. Not sure if it's a great idea, but probably better than a UK indexed fund. I figure it's probably worth a try.
It's totally about when you put in. My parents are still down on a couple of their funds from 1999 ish. Break even happened just recently for them. They'd have been better off with that cash in a long term cash bond.
Why are there so many angel investors right now? Because only high-tech is offering any appreciable growth in the USA.
* max out the company pension scheme in terms of contributions.
* continue to max out the UK tax free savings & investment schemes. It's only £10k ish a year but it starts adding up pretty quick.
* Currently almost half my cash savings are not in the UK, as interest rates here now are poor. I am considering an additional offshore savings account in an interesting APAC country. Maybe Singapore, as many rich people in APAC do their banking there.
* property - I expect I will look into forming a Ltd company as a holding company, where any income is heavily re-invested. This will probably be seeded with a small inheritance, or my cash savings if I don't burn through them when I get my business off the ground
* Yes, I will be investing in myself. One month in to 2011, progress is slow, but I will have a spare time business running by the end of the year.
Didn't John Keynes say:
"The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again."
Though apparently, he was talking about inflation in this case... but the point is, the nature of risk is such that while it works out on average, you still end up with an individual outcome at a fixed point in time which may vary a lot from the expected payoff. Not that I do completely agree with tastybites, but I see the logic.
That's not really the point, I think the point is that I shouldn't have been investing in something that could evaporate on paper in 3 months.
Either way, yes, the point is I'm a terrible equities/retirement investor and a better small business person. Everyone here has excellent reading comprehension, as I would expect on HN.
> That's not to say that your startup isn't a better investment, though.
I didn't sell at the first sign of danger (first of all - selling at the first sign of danger would have been a GOOD idea, but my father, the successful older investor, told me to hold on as it crashed.). I sold after the market had come back by around 60-70% from the lows. That was good enough for me, especially since another 'double dip' was a very real possibility in the beginning of 2010.
If I had sold at the bottom I would have lost nearly everything. But I finally liquidated after my startup was consistently making money and I actually wanted the cash to put back into the business / spend.
Keep in mind I was never broke - I just had a large proportion disappear for a while. That drove me to do 'smarter' things with it after some of it came back.
Having said all that, "You should have held on to it" is standard 20/20 hindsight that makes a market crash sound so predictable. I think I had pretty good forward-sight given the situation.
"You should have held on to it" is not hindsight, that's typically stock market investment advice. Unless a company's stats have changed to the point where it's now a bad investment, you should hold it and ride out the storm.
You must have missed the part where I didn't sell at the bottom, started a profitable company, liquidated the equities to invest into myself at +60% off lows, and then came out ahead 2.5 years later.
'Oh you should have held' is hindsight advice, it's not real advice. It isn't even really saying anything at all. It's just something you say after you hear someone's story about how they lost money.
> 'Oh you should have held' is hindsight advice, it's not real advice.
I think at this point you're just trolling me now, so I'll end it with one more point:
If you know anything about Warren Buffett, you'd know his main thesis is to invest in only the things you understand. That's the advice I ultimately followed to end up in a better place.
Holding onto investments that you don't understand is not his advice at all - that's just a shitty platitude.
The only way to real be secure is diversification and never stop innovating and hustling. If you do you'll get burnt no matter what you have your wealth in.
Selling before the bottom and buying before the climb is the right thing to do, but if you can do that, you're not spending time reading HN, you're either working hard as a trader or relaxing on your desert island.