Over the long term it’s the investment class most likely to grow capital.
Occasionally there are long periods where returns are low (or even negative), but in terms of risk it’s the least risky place to put your money compared to all the alternatives (if properly diversified).
(Not financial advice, just my rule-of-thumb understanding)
> Occasionally there are long periods where returns are low (or even negative), but in terms of risk it’s the least risky place to put your money compared to all the alternatives (if properly diversified).
This is a very US-centric viewpoint, my recollection is that the FTSE didn't beat inflation for like a 20 year period.
That being said, index funds focused on equity are definitely a good way of getting reasonable returns over time (as long as you don't retire into a massive crash).
[Tip] If you decide to cut the cord but want to keep your number you can port it to Andrews & Arnold (a small ISP, based in Bracknell) as a £1.80 per month VOIP subscription.
Not a chemist, but isn’t there something about azeotropic solutions and combined boiling points that make ethanol / methanol separation not as simple as basic lab technique?
> There's no fundamental index fund investment thesis other than "past performance is indicative of future returns".
(Not a finance guy) But isn’t it that buy and hold index funds minimise trading fees, and those savings compound to produce better long term performance than nearly all active funds?
(The “Acquired” podcast episode covering the history of Vanguard and Jack Bogle goes into it in detail)
Tangent: I’ve often wondered why governments don’t provide a ‘dating’ service for employers and employees, or even better some kind of career development and management service for citizens. Use a bit of institutional wisdom to help people make the best of themselves from school age onwards, help people with similar or complementary skills and interests to connect … that kind of thing.
> I’ve often wondered why governments don’t provide a ‘dating’ service for employers and employees, or even better some kind of career development and management service for citizens.
Don’t they? Here in the UK at least participation in programs like that is a requirement of unemployment benefits. One has to attend a job center where one is given advice, sometimes training can get enrolled in trainung and etc. Not saying that they do a great job of it but they seems to at least try to do what you describe. At least nominally.
This’ll go down well (/s) but if you accept that the State has the right to be able to surveil public communications infrastructure (which it has been doing since paper mail was invented, through: radio, telegraph, telex, telephone, fax, email, and mobile telephony) then it’s not surprising certain commoditised public data handling services might be required to provide government access on demand or be restricted from implementing features that can effectively deny that access.
That angry’s up the blood of libertarians, but ultimately from the point of view of the State it has to be able to do its job of detecting and prosecuting serious crime, and it will redraw privacy lines whenever that is substantially impeded by new technology.
The quantity and quality of communications that have been externalized and become effectively searchable and retrievable has increased by many orders of magnitude since paper mail was invented. I think even if you agreed that the State might have had that right then (which not everyone would), it would be good to reconsider what that means with the communications and information systems of today.
A term I've seen thrown around is "good old-fashioned police work" and to me the clear distinction is that it can't be done en masse - a real human police officer had to spend time tracking down each known suspect. E.g. clipping a pen register onto someone's telephone wires, tailing someone, asking the hotel clerk if he's been there, unlocking someone's phone to read their messages, and even watching footage on airgapped CCTV systems are all tasks that can be done one-at-a-time and require human power proportional to how much of them you do. This forces the state to only use them on actual suspects instead of using them on everyone, but still doesn't prevent the state from catching criminals.
Even many dictatorship states, like many of the "socialist" countries, had in the past articles in their constitutions that guaranteed the secrecy of the mail and of the telephone communications (other telecommunications did not exist at that time). Thus it is false that there is some kind of established tradition that governments may have access to private communications.
In reality the secret police did not care about laws or constitution, so private mail correspondence was intercepted and opened, read, then closed again with care, trying to make this undetectable, and the telephone lines of persons of interest were tapped.
Nonetheless, it was understood that this surveillance is actually illegal, so it was hidden as much as possible.
Nowadays, the government institutions of most "free" states, like USA and UK have granted themselves far more rights to do surveillance of their citizens than the dictators of the past.
Detecting and prosecuting serious crime does not need any such general surveillance. The general surveillance just makes much cheaper the detecting of serious crimes, but in exchange it gives the means to the government employees to commit more serious crimes themselves.
Over the long term it’s the investment class most likely to grow capital.
Occasionally there are long periods where returns are low (or even negative), but in terms of risk it’s the least risky place to put your money compared to all the alternatives (if properly diversified).
(Not financial advice, just my rule-of-thumb understanding)
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