So it turns out I started my investment company just at the dawn of the worst decade for the stock market in recorded history. The WSJ reports:
In nearly 200 years of recorded stock-market history, no calendar decade has seen such a dismal performance as the 2000s.
Investors would have been better off investing in pretty much anything else, from bonds to gold or even just stuffing money under a mattress. Since the end of 1999, stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange have lost an average of 0.5% a year thanks to the twin bear markets this decade.
My company and my career survived this debacle only due to the fact that I shun virtually every aspect of the traditional investment approach. If the past decade isn’t reason enough to abandon traditional asset allocation than I don’t know what is. I mean anyone who told you that in 2000 you should have had even a “normal” allocation to equities based on age or what have you obviously couldn’t have been more wrong.