How to invest money wisely
The easiest way to do this is to invest in an index fund (such as SPY, or IWM). This will give you market like performance (almost exactly, minus a fraction of a percent), market like risk, and almost zero brain cells used to manage the investment.
This screenshot, as with all the others in this answer, was produced by Equities Lab (https://www.equitieslab.com). I am a founder of Equities Lab. Feel free to email me at sales AT equitieslab.com
Making your money grow by 50% in 5 years is not bad! If you don’t like a particular style, or think a particular market is going to do poorly in the future, you can just use multiple ETF’s.
As expected, this diversified (Japan, emerging market, US small caps, S&P 500) basket of ETF’s did not perform as well as the S&P 500 itself.
Going back to 2000, we find the results are closer, though similar:
Even so, it should be clear that, for the long haul, investing in stocks is a relatively reasonable way to triple or quadruple your money.
