Will Trice wrote:
- quote -

With the statement in the article that, "This is why we say stocks
rock if you have at least five years on your side," I retract my
contention that anoop was being loose with this article.

I stand by my contention that he is being loose when he claims
conventional wisdom has been "if you didn't need the money for 5
years, you should be invested in stocks." This is not conventional
wisdom IMO. I continue to feel no reputable advisor or web site that
advocated or advocates five years as the minimum time horizon a person
needed prior to investing in stocks.

I agree with you that 5 years may be too
- quote -

I do not have any objection to this re-writing of Anoop's earlier
statement. In particular, sites that have an interest in the public
investing in stocks (or promoting frenzies so as to aattract more
readers and so better advertising deals) will argue for getting into
stocks. But these are not reputable sites in my view. I guess if one
is a non-critical reader, they certainly may seem otherwise, though.
Perhaps this exchange will promote more thoughtful reading.

anoop wrote:
- quote -


If 5 years isn't enough to move your stock allocation north of 0%, would
10 years be enough either? The last Ibbotson data I have access to say
that from 1926 through the end of 2007, US stocks (per the S&P 500)
outperformed Treasury bills 77% of the time over a 5-year period. There
were something over 900 rolling 5-year periods during those years,
though they weren't independent periods. And that ignores complications
like taxes and investment costs, this is just index data.

Moving out to 10 years, by the same measure stocks have beaten T-bills
86% of the time. Sure, that's an improvement but is that really so much
better that it makes 10 years a cut-off for going from 0% stocks to
something higher? At what point did it happen...80%, 85%?

Interestingly, there's been little difference between the rolling 3-year
and rolling 5-year "win rate" for stocks. Most losses in the stock
market have been relatively short-term...just a year or two in duration.
Though of course there were some big losses that lasted much longer than
that - and that's what the typical investor is concerned about.

-Tad

honda.lioness[at]gmail.com wrote:
- quote -

In general, I agree with your posts to this thread, Elle. However, the
first link seems relevant to Anoop's point when it says,

"If you are under the age of 50 and you don’t need to spend your money
for five years or more, stocks can be a very compelling place to invest
your hard-saved money. While there’s definitely no guarantee that
history will repeat itself, stocks have historically had the highest
investment return of all of these categories over the long-run."

This doesn't seem real loose. I agree with you that 5 years may be too
short to call "long term", but I also agree with Anoop that the media
often defines "long term" carelessly.

-Will

william dot trice at ngc dot com

On Dec 29, 6:36 pm, anoop <ghanw...[at]gmail.com> wrote:
- quote -

The part of this web site that mentions five or more years does not
read the way you claim. I am not going to bother checking the others
when you are being this loose.


- quote -

Not sure if you took dividends into account. Either way, negative
returns over ten years have happened. So?

On Dec 29, 1:58*pm, honda.lion...[at]gmail.com wrote:
- quote -

The media is replete with articles that suggest
an investment horizon of 5 or more years calls
for investing in stocks...just google and you will
find plenty. Here are some...
http://www.military.com/Finance/cont...144637,00.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...23/ai_13220967
http://www.fool.com/teens/teens03.htm
http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/val...004/va0217.htm

BTW, as I mentioned earlier, getting in exactly 10 years
ago one would have negative returns.

Anoop