How would you make money ?

[whyBish]

On the topic of the Stock Market,

In grade school a teacher once remarked that the stock market was "just a horse race with higher stakes.  Don't be fooled, it's the highest stakes gambling you can make."

So my best advice is to relax, drink a beer, and watch Horse Number 7 Luckystrike run to a photofinish...  :P

Cheers,

Munk
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Then your teacher lacked understanding of risk and return. The expected return on a horse race (in N.Z.) is 85c per dollar bet placed (through a 'bookie' firm). The expected return on the national lottery is 25c per dollar bet placed. The expected long run return from the sharemarket is roughly the (CPI+Growth Rate ) per annum (so approx real return=growth rate ~= 4%pa) for reasonable fundamental expectations. So horse races and lotteries are negative sum games, whereas 'buy and hold diversified portfolio' is a positive sum game.

Just out of interest, in Australasia, for the company results that I have seen, people that buy insurance are essentially investing their money at negative 45%per annum (for an opportunity cost of about 55%+ which jumps when you realise that you can't claim back tax on insurance if you are an individual (whereas you don't pay capital gains tax on residential property sales)).