Oh, I have Mega Millions and Powerball tickets for every drawing. I can afford $8 per week and I can dream about what I'll do when I hit the jackpot.
@Beth Gallagher And that fact often turns negative unexpectedly. For example, the PREMIER telecommunications company, Lucent Corp., derived from the old Bell Telephone Co., which was broken up by govt., Lucent disappeared from sight. One of Lucent's predecessors was Bell Labs, which we can thank for the transistor, and thus the burgeoning electronics world of today. Ditto the high-ranking Eastman Kodak and Polaroid Corp., both bankrupt. These three give grim testimony to the fact that almost nothing is a "sure thing". Frank
Even though I no longer trade and have been a passive investor since retiring, I have done well by just sitting and holding.
Most of my holdings are doing well. A couple that have a lower price per share than what I paid, still pay good dividends.
My dad's best friend is a stockbroker, so I suppose they are still dabbling around. As for me, I have no stocks.
I have been a dividend investor for many years, and I have benefited through the last few years with the capital appreciation of those dividend paying stocks. As well, most of them have boosted their dividends so that has provided a nice pay raise and that alone has handily beat inflation. However, I have been patiently waiting for a pullback as I have some cash to invest and the valuations are too high at this time.
My stock dividends are paying $2.00 a quarter now, up from $0.32 a couple of years ago, so my standard of living has skyrocketed.
I do not own any stocks but in around about way everyone has benefited. Using the stock market as a barometer of sorts along with the sales records that are being touted from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, there’s a lot of confidence that our economy is doing quite well or at least a heckova lot better than just a few short years ago.
We have doubled our investment portfolio since the 2008 crash, most of it in the last 3 years, while drawing from it to live on at the same time. The last 3 years has been very very good