• Forum Think Finance - Bolsa e Forex »
• Perfil de rnbc »
• Mostrar Mensagens »
• Tópicos

Dow Jones Reality Check

I'm still laughing at the news yesterday that oh my gosh, the DJIA hit its highest ever, about 14,253, and that the world has been reborn.

Let's look at reality. The DJIA hasn't done anything significant since the Internet became popular. The DJIA was 10,000 in March, 1999 — fourteen years ago. It's had plenty of downs since then, but if you put $1,000 in a DJIA index fund back before practical DSLRs, it would be worth $1,450 today, presuming you were in a no-load fund. Investing in individual "good" sticks would have done worse, since the DJIA is a "cooked" number consisting of only the biggest and best stocks. If you had invested in Enron, it was about $67 a share in March 1999, and worth nothing today. Kodak stock was also a strong component of the DJIA in 1999, also at $67 a share, but was dfelisted from the DJIA in 2004 since it wasn't doing well enough, and today in chapter 11, is worth about 20 cents a share. By the DJIA picking only healthy stocks, the DJIA appears to grow more than individual stocks do.

Even if you invested in stocks and did as well as the cooked DJIA value, you've seen a 43% gain in 14 years, or 2.6% gain compounded annually — about the same or less than putting the same money in a passbook savings account.

If you had bought a case of Nikon 28mm f/1.4 AF-D lenses at $1,200 each, they'd be worth about double today — and you've have had the use of a fantastic lens all this time.

Of course if you'd bought into the LEICA system back in 2009 when I did and suggested you all also make the ultimate upgrade, the LEICA lenses I bought back then are worth about double what I paid for them, in just four short years, about a 20% annually-compounded appreciation rate. You could have bought LEICA lenses and locked them in your safe, walked around as if you were a big-shot because you had LEICAs, and even with them sitting on your shelf unused , would have returned about ten times the appreciation of the Dow Jones. They would have been worth even more to you if you used them; using them doesn't depreciate them. Unlike worthless paper "investments," real investments in real toys are actually useful on a daily basis.

The real way to make money is to invest it in your own business. The stock market is promoted by the people who make money as commissions for buying or selling your stocks for you; unless you're consistently smarter than the guys with PhD's in math and economics managing the funds at mutual fund houses, you aren't going to win against them in the stock market. Making money in the stock market, exactly like making money in Las Vegas, is a fantasy promoted by the sales houses who profit when you buy these things.

Oh yes — if you invested in a DJIA no-load index fund in 1999 (if you even can buy and sell that fund with no load), you'd have seen 43% gain today. Wow, that's zero real return, since inflation has increased the same amount since 1999!

So, as usual, it's media just trying to create news. At least the DJIA has kept up with inflation; the NASDAQ (the tech stocks you folks pay the most attention to) was at over 5,000 in March 2000, and today it's at 3,200 — and that's a very cooked number with the low-performers removed. Actual investors usually have done much worse in the NASDAQ. Just like Vegas, people love to brag about their winnings, but you'll never hear the great majority of losers ever saying anything about how much they lost.

See also How to Afford Anything. Invest your money in something over which you have direct control, like your own business or the content of your own camera bag.

-- Ken Rockwell

• Risco cambial alto por via dos sucessivos aumentos da massa monetária.
• Risco de fuga capitais (americanos) para moedas mais fortes, o que potencia o problema anterior.
• Impostos altos: mesmo preenchendo o W-8BEN os dividendos pagam 15% à cabeça, mais os impostos portugueses. Grande parte do potencial valorizador de longo prazo do mercado americano está nos dividendos, e assim não dá!
• Dois factores altamente discutíveis. Sujeito-me a ser sovado por os mencionar:
  
  • Muita informação acessível sobre as empresas americanas, de forma resumida, gratuita, e organizada, o que equaliza o mercado e limita a vantagem de fazer boas análises. Mesmo assim há aberrações como a Apple vs Amazon.
  • Mercado europeu fragmentado e com informação sobre as empresas pouco acessível. Muita dela aparece primeiro na língua nativa e só mais tarde é analisada e dissecada em inglês, o que facilita encontrar «pechinchas» antes dos outros se se souber a língua.
• Melhor conhecimento dos mercados locais. Mesmo sem querer conhecemos relativamente bem as empresas no mercado português e espanhol, basta ler notícias e andar por aí. A América está lá longe e sem respirar o pó daquela terra todos os dias é difícil sentir se empresas como a Ford, a GM, a Apple, etc... estão a cair em desgraça junto dos consumidores ou pelo contrário a ganhar terreno.