Investing Advice or Education

On CNBC

After you have decided you'd like to invest your hard earned money, next question is what to invest in, what to do.  You could watch CNBC all day and listen to the talking heads discuss trading but not much on investing.

Or you could call a stockbroker who is very eager to help you with your investments. Stockbrokers are only too happy to offer investing advice for a fee!

The problem with investment advice is that you will slowly become dependent.

Investment education is different.  Once you have educated yourself to become financially literate, not at a PhD level, just literate, you will have liberated yourself.

It is hard to take advantage of an educated investor.

Educating yourself is easy too and well worth the very small amount of time it takes. Read this blog and others.  Go to yahoo finance or google finance and just read.

Email me if you have any questions too.

Gold versus Stocks

A lot of noise around gold these days, it seems we are bombarded with ads reminding us to buy gold.

Here is the truth about gold.  Gold is a commodity and as such is susceptible only to perceived supply and demand.

If you thought stocks are volatile, watch commodities for a while!

The chart compares the total real returns over the period, 1925 to 2010. Gold has climbed a great deal in the last year, not on this chart so I imagine the yellow line to be well above the red but still not above the blue which is stocks.

Sure, we'd all like to have sold all our stocks in 2000 before the bubble burst and bought gold but timing the different asset classes is just too difficult and commodities are dangerous.  The average investor and yes, that means you, is better off staying the course with your mix of stocks, bonds, CD's and cash.