Quote from hayman:
I am a conservative investor (always have been) and am looking to retire in the next 10 years. Realistically, I will need an ROI of at least 5% per year over the next 10 years on my non-real estate investments to achieve this dream, even assuming today's current rate of inflation.
I am extremely concerned about how to achieve this, without incurring some major risk. My feeling is that the equity markets are out of control and totally disconnected from the domestic and world economic outlooks. The bond markets are at very scary levels (how much lower can interest rates go? Due for a major correction, IMO). Commodities are at scary lofty levels as well. And the world economy is on tenderhooks as well; we're one major European bank failure away from calamity, IMO. Throw in the debt issues, high worldwide unemployment, instability in the Middle East, and I am on high alert. CD's and Money markets pay crap too, and certainly are not keeping up with the rate of inflation.
Here in NY, real inflation (forget this bullshit CPI statistic) is somewhere around 7-8% for me. This due to rampant increases in food, electric utility, home heating oil, health insurance increases, tuition increases, gasoline, local taxes, etc., etc., etc.
So, without incurring major risk that may be unrecoverable in a 10 year time frame, where would you look to invest for the next year, 5 years, 10 years, with an eye out to achieving an average ROI of 5% over this 10 year period? Given my gloom and doom outlook, am I better off investing in a longer-term CD, to just minimize my real loss, and preserve as much capital as possible?
I would greatly appreciate any serious commentary on the above. I really don't know where to invest my money any more.
