Alternatives to the Stock Market

[brewer12345]

How about direct investment in a small business that gives you are partnership like deal and lets you participate on the cash flow. Getting a piece of cash flow is sure more than any company pays in dividend, plus a small business is valued close to asset value (depends on the time you get in), not 20 times over that. I have a portfolio of those and the monthly cash flow from that outpaces anything I was ever able to get done in my brokerage account.

How are you sourcing and evaluating these opportunities? How do you avoid control issues, assuming you are a minority partner not running the business? How much are you puttting in each investment?

 

[RonBoyd]

How about direct investment in a small business that gives you are partnership like deal and lets you participate on the cash flow. Getting a piece of cash flow is sure more than any company pays in dividend, plus a small business is valued close to asset value (depends on the time you get in), not 20 times over that. I have a portfolio of those and the monthly cash flow from that outpaces anything I was ever able to get done in my brokerage account.

I simple terms: Become a Venture Capitalist.

 

[HornedToad10]

Are you an eternal optimist or just a Ouija board believer? I think we have seen changes in the world in the last 10 years that rule out the last 50 years of strategies for the stock market. The cheese has moved IMHO.

Lol. If the cheese has moved then the stock market might stay at 8-10k for the next 50 years. Which is also catastrophic, but the Dow isn't going to 3k. If it does, then you should be investing in food, machine guns, and gas/oil.

 

[haha]

How do you avoid control issues, assuming you are a minority partner not running the business?

It seems to me that a minority owner in a small business occupies the same position as does a centipede in the life of a wasp.

Ha

 

[HornedToad10]

for 40 years 70 mio baby boomers put their money into 401Ks and now they need that money to pay the bills. Many will pull every thing out over the next 7 - 10 years. Newer generations are not saving as much anymore. In my humble opinion the market dynamics have changed. Anybody try to measure that and make a prediction. I say, down or stagnation is a very likely scenario.

401ks have only existed for around ~27-28 years and have only been popular for around ~20 years. Before that it was pensions. I'm expecting returns to be lower domestically. Hopefully that will be made up on the international side. But ~3-4% real domestically versus previous 6-8% real. I expect the stock market to at least match the inflation rate over the next 40 years.

As before, I think DOW 3000 is pretty much World War 3 level apocolypse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/401(k)#cite_note-ebsi-3

401k History - Wikipdeia
In the mid-1980s, there were fewer than 8 million participants with less than $100 billion of assets in 401(k) plans.[5] By 2006, there were seventy-million participants with more than $3 trillion of assets in 401(k) plans.[5] There were 438,000 companies sponsoring 401(k) plans in 2003.[4]

 

[brewer12345]

for 40 years 70 mio baby boomers put their money into 401Ks and now they need that money to pay the bills. Many will pull every thing out over the next 7 - 10 years. Newer generations are not saving as much anymore. In my humble opinion the market dynamics have changed. Anybody try to measure that and make a prediction. I say, down or stagnation is a very likely scenario.

So we have capital controls on on cross border investing in the US now?

 

[youbet]

Exactly... It will be interesting where the market will end up by the end of the year.

I've been investing for about 45 yrs. Every year has been "interesting." Pleasantly interesting and otherwise..........

The comments being made about passive vs active investing are very interesting. Personnally, I've avoided active investing all my life and acheived reasonable returns (despite zillions of mistakes blended in) but passive investing is likely to be tough in the immediate future as investors ask the same question as OP: where can I get decent real returns with a minumum of risk?