Wall Street is stealing another 20% from you 2010 to 2020

[Joanne98]

How not to lose 2010-2020? Avoid Wall Street; don't play by their rules

So why bet on the house? Why bet with the Wall Street casino for another decade? Why? You're betting in a rigged casino. Worse, they keep adding powerful new tools, scams and algorithms to their "financial weapons of mass destruction" arsenal, as Warren Buffett calls this mysterious $670 trillion global shadow banking world of derivatives. You cannot win.

Statistically, the odds now predict Wall Street losing another 20% of your money in the next decade. The momentum's headed down. So, what should you do? Sell all your stocks, ETFs, bonds and funds. Get out of commodities and gold. Sell.

You think I'm crazy? Imagine: You're a 50-year-old boomer. Flash forward to 2020. Retirement time? But you've lost another 20%, while those Wall Street Fat Cats will be paying themselves record bonuses averaging half-a-million annually for all 10 years from 2010 and 2020 ... but you can't retire. They got their bonuses siphoning money out of your accounts.

What do you expects some kind of divine intervention will save you? Get real, consider the "Swiss Family Robinson" scenario.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wall-street-is-stealing-another-20-from-you-2010-03-02

[midnight]

1. I'm glad that some boomers have money still. I'm worried that these fat cats

will then make a "SAFETY" call to take away are Social Security.

[cutlassmama]

4. they are already working on just that.

[hughee99]

2. "Statistically, the odds now predict" Wall Street losing another 20% in the next decade?

Which statistics and odds? Momentum headed down so the next decade is going to suck? In 2000, momentum was headed up, but look how the last 10 years went. One of the few truthful sayings you'll hear on wall street "past performance is no guarantee of future results"

"Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue...ayyyyy!"

[Turbineguy]

3. Even on Wallstreet

there is a market force.

Wallstreet's job is to join investors with people who need money for business purposes. If you say, "OK, I'll connect you two" and take all the money in pay and bonuses, leaving the investor broke and the business without money, people will figure out a work-around. At this time Wallstreet sucks about a trillion dollars per year out of the economy, money that could be used to expand the economy and raise the standard of living for the rest of us.

There's a natural price people are willing to pay. Consider what mutual funds charge as management fees.

It started already with private equity funds, which buy up companies in order to give the returns due to investors. As these funds buy up the best, well-run companies, few good, or only extremely large, companies are left for the rabble (that's us) to invest in.

[truedelphi]

5. the small business that my spouse and I run has been

Able to attract investors precisely because the properly run small business can do so.

We can offer a decent rate of return, and we are not about "legit" Wall Street style Ponzi schemes that enable us to get rich and pull the rug out from under the investors.

We got no where with trying to attract investors back when people we knew preferred to sink it into the housing market or the stock market. (And "sink" is that exactly precise word for what happened to people then.)

So I got to say, "work arounds" are exactly what are going on these days.

[Common Sense Party]

6. He gets some of the outrage right, but he's wrong on so much.

Farrell states that for the last decade, "Wall Street lost trillions, lost 11% of your money. Adjusted for inflation, Wall Street lost 20% of your money." Unfortunately, Farrell is being extremely loose with the facts here. When he says "Wall Street" here, he is actually referring to the S&P 500 index, a list of 500 large companies in America. Yes, if you bought all 500 of those stocks at the beginning of 2000 and you sold them at the end of 2009, you would have realized a loss of about 11% for the decade, a bit more than 1% a year.

But who did that? Not me, and probably not you, either.

It was a bad decade, no doubt. It was ugly--we had two very steep, very painful, and very long bear markets that savaged returns. And yet, when I look down the list of funds in my 401(k), I don't see many negative average returns for the past decade.

I see a large cap growth fund that averaged a positive 0.83% return from 2000 to 2009. That's nothing to jump for joy about, but when the S&P averaged a negative 1.2%, I'm okay with it. And that's not all I see.

I see a large cap value fund that averaged 4.2% for the decade. A mid cap value fund that returned an average 6.82% per year. An international fun that averaged 5.75% and an emerging markets fund that returned an amazing 6.67% per year during the "lost decade." Plus I see bond funds that did as well or better than many stock funds.

The point is, the S&P 500 is not equivalent to "Wall Street." And poor returns are not necessarily the result of nefarious shenanigans. Sometimes, the market does what the market does (and WE are the market). The best way to prepare for the whims and caprices of the market are to be well diversified--to invest in large caps, small caps, mid caps, internationals, bonds, etc.

Farrell then, amazingly dons his Karnac hat and declares: "The odds now predict Wall Street losing another 20% of your money in the next decade." Really? On what do you base that, Mr. Farrell? When has the stock market--even as measured by something as limited as the S&P 500--ever had two back-to-back decades of 20% losses? Ever? It has never happened.

Better idea: Be sensible and prudent, but take some risks to stay ahead of inflation. Diversify and hold on to good investments. Don't get scared out of solid funds because of short-term downturns or media hysteria (e.g., Mr. Farrell). Invest for the long run. If you are getting to the home stretch before retirement, slow down and get more cautious. But if you have a long time to go until retirement, although the road will no doubt be bumpy, the destination will be worth it.

Just because it's an "investment"--a stock, a bond, a mutual fund, an ETF--doesn't mean that some Wall Street swindler is going to "steal" your money. American investors LOSE more of their OWN money due to irrational behavior and poor decisions than Wall Street scammers ever steal from them.