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Stocks Still Outperform, Researchers Claim

Despite volatility, stocks gain value over time

By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com

August 10, 2009

Those who kept their assets in stocks, for the most part, have seen their portfolios pare some of their losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is back over 9,300 after bottoming around 6600 in March.

So, where should you put your money now? Researchers at Butler University's College of Business suggest stocks have always outperformed other investments, and will probably continue to do so.

Using both historical results and a simulation of thousands of possible outcomes, the professors discovered that for every possible 40-year period, an investor who was invested 100 percent in stocks until 10 years before retirement and then switched to bonds, enjoyed better returns than someone who had a more diversified portfolio.

"We found that a much greater emphasis on stocks throughout most of a person's investing career provided a much larger retirement portfolio than previously expected," said Steve Dolvin, one of the lead researchers and associate professor of finance at Butler.

The professors call this new approach the 100/10 Approach.

While the market may be volatile over a 40-year period, the research shows that increases and decreases in stock value eventually level out on the up side under the 100/10 Approach. Dolvin credits this result with an investor's patience with the stock market.

"By contrast, an impatient investor might pull out of the market when his or her stock was at a low point - getting only the downside and missing any chance of recovery. The volatility would not level out because he or she would come out of the market at the wrong point."

Dolvin says that even though the 100/10 Approach has been proven to work, it should only be used by educated investors that can avoid common behavioral errors.

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