Re: What have you invested since the recession and how are they doing?

real estate, stocks, anything?

the recession dealt quite a bit of damage to me. so i chickened out and mostly missed the boat.

i guess i will catch up with ya on the next downswing

I buy and hold index funds, so my performance has been almost exactly the same as the market. But I started a new, higher paying job in September 2008, so I had a lot of free cash flow and put every red cent I had into stocks (through index funds) when they were cheap. I timed the market in that respect.

I don't own any real estate, bonds or bond funds, individual stocks, precious metals, or anything else. The simple reason is that they are either more expensive, more work or have weaker performance than stocks, or all three (for example, in the case of real estate).

But of you bought a house you could live in it while waiting for it to turn profit. A house holds value a lot better than stocks. And even if the value goes down to a worthless level, you can still make use (and profit) of it unlike stocks .The key question is, when did you start investing

A residence is a nonperforming asset. It does not generate any profit. And the rate of return on residential real estate is vastly inferior to stocks--about half in real numbers, even lower in real return. That's not to mention the lack of liquidity in residential real estate and all of the taxes, upkeep, insurance, etc. It is also, as many learned in the past 6 years, among the least diversified and most risky ways to hold capital. 1992, but in a more serious way in 1996.

Residential real estate does provide a rental yield (profit), which can be attributed to a homeowner's returns. But real estate investors have a lot of delusion about the superiority of their (inferior) assets. Public equity does outperform residential real estate, and especially on a risk-adjusted basis, given the lack of scope for diversification in real estate investments.