The real threat to Wall Street
Oct 25, 2011, 9:13 AM | Updated: 9:21 am
Listen to Dave Ross Commentary: The real threat to Wall Street
Police today chased off another group of Wall Street occupiers — this time in Oakland.
Another park made safe from idealism. But it turns out that the real threat to Wall Street isn’t the people seeking to occupy it. It’s the people who already occupy it.
According to Brett Arends on MarketWatch.com, on paper, investors are up on average 120 percent in the last 15 years, which looks spectacular except for one eensy teensy asterisk. He points out that those figures don’t account for the cost of living.
When you adjust for the cost of living, ordinary stock market investors over the last fifteen years have made zero!
And if you went through a broker, like the big boys do, and paid that 1 percent annual fee they charge, you LOST money.
All that advice about dollar cost averaging, and investing for the long run; a lot of investors are finding they’d be BETTER off if they’d spent the last 15 years stuffing money in the mattress.
It’d be worth it! Because the greatest threat to Wall Street isn’t unkempt protesters, it’s the pathetic investment returns. It’s the so-called capitalists who’ve been consistently eroding your capital.
The cops have been evicting the wrong people!
I know their tents may be ugly, but have you noticed they’re the one type of housing that hasn’t lost value?
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Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
