Quote:
Originally Posted by BigDeanEvans
From the first day of trading, January 22, 2001, after President Bush became the 43rd President of the United States, until the last trading day, January 19, 2007, before the publication date of this article, the performance of the major stock markets—measured by the index portfolios of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500, and the NASDAQ Composite—has been abominable. Only the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed to achieve a positive real return on investment over the past six years, and that return was a miserly half-a-percent on an annualized basis, a level of performance that would get any fund manager taken out and shot.
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Agree BigDeanEvans...
Kinda related - tho more relevant to folks who need to preserve their nesteggs, ie senior citizens etc - it's crucial that their return on investment is at least keeping up with inflation.
Inflation has been 15% over the last five years (US Consumer Price Index), but if you add up the total of the major US equity mutual funds, (each are assets of over $20 billion) - the majority, over 60% were actually "wealth destroyers" simply because their returns were less than 15% over the last five years.
A further source of concern for investors is that collectively, these huge funds still had almost half a trillion dollars invested in them - and that's forgetting the 100's of smaller funds with equally poor results. From the huge money values still invested in these funds, it would appear a lot of folks are very passive in their investing. It also raises the question as to what the brokers/financial advisors/fund managers of the largest three fund companies have been doing over this period, - other than collecting ill-deserved fees.
Also just noticed that the same applies to Canada where the largest funds have also been wealth destroyers - worth any investor keeping an eye on.
There are plenty areas globally which are sound and stable investment areas and offering far more than the returns offered by many major funds, but amazing there seems to be a closet mentality, or perhaps, neglect in dumping some investment into them. Just totalled a sampling here where I'm looking after investment for others as well as myself and would be embarassed to tell an investor they never even kept up with inflation. The sampling of lady's investment of $260K over.. 38 months has converted that $260K into $1,140,00.00 and it's still climbing. OK.. you need to know the market and secure it to hell and back, but that's what fund managers do as a profession - but obviously failing miserably.