Recently, I've been having second thoughts on long term investing. My friend asked me, is long term investing really good? And I thought it was an idiot proof answer... Wasn't the answer just a simple... Yes? So... curious me, went to look back at some data... So I went to look at a couple of stocks and indexes. I'll give some estimated rounded numbers so that it's easier to read... Just over the past 25 years. I typically benchmark returns to double every 10 years. So for a 20 year investment, returns should be 4x. ======================== NASDAQ... The NASDAQ is currently around 10,000 points. If you bought the NASDAQ in 1995, it was around 1,000 points. You return now would be 10x after 25 years. So it's easy to say. "WOW long term investment works." However... If you bought the NASDAQ in 2000, at the height of the dotcom era, it was around 5,000 points. You return now would be 2x. Which is considered low after a 20 year time frame....