Dow Jones vs World Travelling

A brief comment on another form of gambling: the stock market.

Conventional wisdom says that in the long run you always get a decent return on the stock market, right? in the long run? What does that mean specifically? Eight years or so, that, for me, is a long time.

So let's see...the Dow Jones index on - let's pick a date for this contrived example - oh, I don't know, how about January 14th, 2000 - was 11,722.

And the Dow Jones today is 11,388. That's a total return over almost nine years of -2.8%. Take inflation into account, and we talking about a serious way to lose money. If you had $10,000 to invest back on Jan 14th, 2000, you'd have been wiser blowing it all on an extended round-the-world trip. Which is, coincidentally, what I did.