Who Can Get You The Best Investment Return?
No one.
There seems to be a rampant, raging myth that there are people out there with incredible talent, a key piece of knowledge, insight, or intuition, which enable them to make the right investing moves and earn higher returns than the average bear.
I’m telling you, if you believe that, you’re in for a lifetime of investing heartaches.
Think about it. If anyone was that skilled, why would they be investing your money? They’d be investing their own, from their laptop, sitting on a beach somewhere.
Don’t fall for the slick sales pitch complete with fancy graphs and backed by research. It’s easy to come up with a strategy that would have performed well over the last five years. Then you put the numbers in a pretty format and show people how much they would have made if they had followed the strategy.
It’s impossible to come with a strategy that will deliver the same results over the next five years. The next five years will not look like the last five.
So instead of making decisions based on investment returns, make decisions based on investing principles and your comfort level with risk.
Want to know what returns to expect in stocks and bonds? Check out the graphs in Rolling Index Returns that show you the best one, five, ten and twenty year returns as well as the worst.
Or see year by year S&P 500 index returns from 1973 - 2009 in Historical Stock Market Returns.
Or to form your own set of realistic expectations check out 4 Easy Ways To Learn About Investing.
Who Can Get You The Best Investment Return? originally appeared on About.com Money Over 55 on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 20:02:30.
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