How an investment has performed depends more on the timeframe you choose than the actual merit of the investment. Bitcoin is probably the best-performing investment out there over the past ten years – when Sam Volkering first told me about it. And gold had a miserable decade. But that’s only because it peaked after a very good run the decade before…
Change the analysis to a more recent one and gold outperforms nicely for UK investors, while bitcoin has been disappointing.
They tell you stocks go up in the long run, but they don’t show you that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at the same level in 1982 as in 1915, once you adjust for inflation…
Remember that, as time advances, the starting point in your historical analysis is shifting as much as your endpoint. Unless you click on the “Year to date” button. Then your comparisons completely reset only once a year. But they’re just as misleading.
One reason our stock market and bond market rout this year has been so severe is that it coincided so nicely with the start of the calendar year. While other years’ plunges are split over two years, or include good performance for part of the year, our time-period of comparison captures the plunge nicely.
But, in this video, Sam Volkering and I don’t discuss chart crimes for long. Those are cherry-picked bits of data designed to mislead. Instead, we shift to the merits and disappointments of our favourite investments – gold and bitcoin.
What’s gone wrong with gold and bitcoin? Or has it gone wrong at all?
And if you’d like to hear from Nigel and other guests more often and more conveniently, why not sign up to the Fortune & Freedom podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or Google Podcasts?
Nick Hubble
Editor, Fortune & Freedom
PS If you’re wondering which investment is leaving both gold and bitcoin in the dust this year, well ,it’s actually a particular strategy. Find out more about how it’s made an 89% cumulative return through 2022’s falling market here.
