Stocks (still) rule! why a couple of billionaires are bullish on equities [fortune, may 23, 2011]
In this article, Quick (2011) addressed to seemingly disconnect between the steady stream of "bad" economic and financial news over the past three years and the actions of an investor subset that she refers to a billionaire investors in pursuing equity stock investments in 2011. She wondered in the article, what it was that this investor subset saw in the global economy that others were not seeing, or if they were seeing those things they were misinterpreting them (assuming that the perceptions of the billionaire investor subset were (and are) correct.
Quick (2011) was provided some objective reasons for the optimism of the billionaire investor subset for their continuing belief in the wisdom of placing a primary focus on equity investments over the long-term. One of these objective reasons is that, over the past 12 years (a span of time that encompasses the most recent severe global economic recession and financial meltdown) is that earnings-per-share for most major corporations have increased at more than double the rate of increase of market prices of equity stocks. Thus, while "bad" news keeps market prices low and somewhat volatile, corporate earning power an potential continues to increase. Subjective reasons for the actions of the billionaire investors also were given to Quick (2011). One of the subjective reasons was that one should "buy stocks when news is really bad and sell when everything is really good" (quoted by Quick, 2011, p. 78).
There has long been a contention that equity stocks provide the best return on investment over the long-term when compared with other financial investment vehicles. Seemingly countless studies have validated this contention. Thus, the contentions of the so-called billionaire investors are not ground-breaking. Rather, they
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