Investors have to remember: corporate profits are going up, but stocks are going up faster. How can that continue indefinitely? Investors can only earn what companies themselves can earn; the government or the markets themselves don't kick anything in. How can you get anything more out of a farm than what it grows?
Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks (shares') is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results (after fees and expenses) of the great majority of investment professionals.
The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, as circumstances presently appear, I feel substantially greater size is more likely to harm future results than to help them. This might not be true for my own personal results, but it is likely to be true for your results.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.
We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future.
Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party... the poor and middle class.
But 300 million Americans, their lending institutions, their government, their media, all believed that house prices were going to go up consistently. And that got billed into a $20 trillion residential home market. Lending was done based on it, and everybody did a lot of foolish things.
Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.