How many people providing investment advice in this section are actually millionaires?
January 16, 2010 by
Filed under investment advice
Someone on TV once said “don’t take financial advice from someone who’s not a millionaire”. It seems to make sense. Of course, all of us are ’some-future-day’ millionaires and we have the right formula, we just need a bit of time before we prove ourselves right. But who needs the evidence when the theory’s so sound?
If you were a millionaire, would you hang around on YA, or would you be off having a life somewhere?
Whats your question? I thought I knew until I read the rest of your posting. It sounds more like a statement that everyone’s advice is equally good than any real question.
zero would be a safe guess
and anyone around here claims to be knowledgeable about economy should be ignored… what a bunch of sound bite fed fakes.
rich people do not generally give advice. they receive advice on payment. So the morale of the story is, the person giving u advice is making money(whether advice is good or bad)
none. I am not sure that is criteria for giving investment advice
Even Warren Buffett wasn’t a millionaire all his life. He started with a lot less than a million dollars.
But investment advice is seldom a good thing to give or to take. Because investors need to understand their own investment strategy in intimate detail in order to make good judgements and good decisions. And not everyone’s investment strategy is the same.
A day-trader for example will do very poorly if he tries to select stocks like Warren Buffett does. Because these stocks often don’t have much volatility. And volatility is what a day-trader needs. And there are many other examples like that.
Most millionaires are only millionaires because they inherited the money. Others got lucky. Only some are worth taking there advice.
About the same as non-millionaires.
Millionaires don’t necessarily make their money on the stock market. Most of them may have large amounts of stock they receive through employee stock options which allow them to buy a $ 100 stock for $10 or some other discounted price.
My total net worth is over $ 1 million, but only a small part of it came from gains on the stocks I’ve bought.
>>> But who needs the evidence when the theory’s so sound? <<<
For every complicated question, there is a solution which is obvious, simple and wrong.
Here is how one person I know became a millionaire. He took 100,000 out of his pay each year and bought government bonds. After about eight years (with the interest reinvested) he was a millionaire. This is sound advice, but, unless you are an attorney making over 250,000 per year, like he is, this advice isn’t of much practical use.
I also know someone who has over a million dollars in stock (a distant relative). He’s constantly giving his opinion on the market to anyone and everyone. The truth is, he doesn’t have a clue. He inherited it all.
And then there are people like me who trade all day, but don’t have a million dollars because they aren’t accumulating it. The profits are how I make a living and I take money out all the time to cover living expenses. (Sometimes I go outside and pick up branches that a storm has blown down so they won’t get in the way of my lawn service. Sometimes I want to take a break from looking at charts online and jump over to Yahoo Answers just to look at something different on my screen.)
Who should you look to for advice?
I would say zero is the answer.
With the exception of low level millionaires, those worth under $5-10 million (net worth including their real estate holdings) who also often hawk seminars, tend to say this to sell their books and programs.
The very wealthy take advice from people who have the time and understanding on complex market issues. One does not have to be wealthy to learn this, and even if one was wealthy, wealth does not equal intelligence, nor does wealth come with wisdom.