In 1900, America had around 4,000 millionaire families. If those families had done nothing clever at all, simply invested in the stock market, spent a modest slice each year and left the rest to compound, the maths says they should have produced somewhere in the region of 16,000 billionaire households by today.
A thought experiment on why even perfect foresight about the news is not enough, and why owning the market usually is. Imagine it is the end of 1999. The millennium is about to turn, the dot-com boom is at full roar, and someone hands you tomorrow's newspapers for the next 25 years. Not the share prices, just the headlines. You flick through and two pharmaceutical stories jump out.
Why, in a high tax, high-transparency Ireland, investing your money well is often the smartest financial decision. A recent Financial Times column recounted a dinner conversation that has stayed with me. A successful private equity investor was asked why he didn’t simply buy a bigger home and move in full-time with his partner in another city. His answer wasn’t about her, or the city, or the house. It was: “I couldn’t do that. I’d be paying a much higher tax rate.”
It's a question that deserves a thoughtful, nuanced answer. In the age of robo-advisors, commission-free trading apps, and abundant financial information online, the role of the financial advisor has never been more scrutinised - or more valuable. After years in this profession, I've observed that people generally fall into one of three groups when it comes to financial advice:
There's a simple truth about building wealth that never makes it onto motivational posters: “you're going to suffer either way”. The only real choice you get is which flavour of pain you prefer. As an investor, there are only three main levers you can pull to improve your financial future.
Market sell-offs now feel increasingly familiar: sharp headlines, fast declines, and then, often before investors can reposition - markets recover. What once felt like prolonged, grinding bear markets* now resemble acute shocks that resolve with surprising speed.