Buy the Market regularly over time, and never sell

Want a 10% average return guaranteed forever?

The easiest most sure fire way to wealth for anyone and everyone is to “buy the market regularly over time” and never sell.

By market, I mean the entire USA stock market (every publicly listed corporation in America. (Vanguard’s VTI for example) or the S&P500 if you prefer.

Not the Asian, European or other markets, buy the American market.  Why USA?  Can you name any invention that didn’t originate from the USA in the past hundred years?  Most publicly traded American companies operate and dominate globally.  Never bet against America.

By “Over time”, I mean, devote a percentage of your paycheck every week, biweekly or month and never stop investing.

Use a tax preferred account such as your Roth IRA or TFSA

Use a low fee exchange traded fund (ETF), Vanguard Group is great.  Avoid mutual funds always!  Their annual fees are absurd.  Don’t make your bank rich, make yourself rich.

Start now!  Get every worker in a publicly traded company working for you, the owner.

Reinvest all dividends, that is, make sure your investment accounts are set up for DRIP “Dividend Re-Investment Plan” so as to compound quarterly dividends.

No investment beats stocks, productivity always increases and those gains flow to stock owners in the form of profits.  Productivity is the output of goods and services divided by the inputs to make them, its key driver is technology which only improves and doesn’t regress. Steady population growth is also assumed.

This is one of the greatest graphics ever printed.  It comes from “Stocks for the Long Run” by Jeremy Siegel.  It shows $1 invested in stocks in 1802 with Thomas Jefferson as President grows to $12.7 million with President George W. Bush courtesy of reinvestment.  Relax, it’s $755,163 inflation adjusted, still unbeatable.

It should jump out to you that the only way you could ever lose is either don’t buy the market or Sell!  Notice the dip during the Great Depression, stagflation of the 70s, the dot com bust.  The subprime crisis and covid pandemic also caused down blips only to resume the ever upward trajectory of valuations due to increasing productivity and population.

Save $10 per day and invest the $3,650 into the market annually for 30 years at its average historic return of 10%, yields $600 thousand.  In 40 years $1.6 million.  And in 50 years $4.25 million.

“Buy the Market Regularly Over Time” and Never Sell!