As far as I can see John didn’t really disagree with me, except that I didn’t point out gold was not an investment. Well I didn’t do that because I thought so many people on here had already taken for granted that gold was a great investment. And so I thought I’d be more likely dismissed if I pointed that out, and so instead I’d simply point out that if treated like an investment, it was inferior to equities, which are basically best. From there I argued that unless you have close to six figures time spent investing would be better spent working. The fees you incur are higher as a proportion so it is even harder to beat an underlying benchmark. Abstracting from these beating the index is hard (to say that is misleading in that one might infer that chances are better if one tries harder, which probably isn’t true - if you end up trading more you have even less chance due to the fees). So I said it is best to invest in funds. Few funds will outperform an index, so you could do a lot worse than to pick an index. Personally I have had a lot of success in a fund which has outperformed it’s benchmark consistently. I don’t really know what did which others didn’t. But once a fund manager has established such a successful record it seems reasonable to believe he may be able to maintain it (obviously this cannot be relied upon, but you expect he is better than the average).
And now we have Clayton saying gold is an investment. Also earlier in the thread In response to the question of whether gold or silver were a good investment, Smiling Dave wrote: “they are good because they retain their value in times of inflation and low interest rates, because people want gold exactly then.” Implying that gold is a good investment.
sonofliberty75 (Seeking investment advice) starts a thread calling seeking investment advice: “I do currently own some gold and silver, but I am wanting to get into some other investments as well”