Yes long term investment is nonsense.
You can be wiped clean with long time investment.
Check Washington MUTUAL.
City Bank.
Country Wide
Indy Mac
Lehman
and other hundreds of giant American corporations that went belly up.
Look at Microsoft, Intel, Boeing.They are performing miserably last five years.
There is no safety in long term investment.
Absolutely none.
The Dow Jones components keep changing dropping the bad performers.
So u can not compare apple to Apple.

WHAT?

No, the stock market is, among other international markets, the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City. Las Vegas is NOT on Wall Street.

It sure feels like it. Ride the wheel.

Only for the average guy.Its been shown the average investor usually does not come out head if he plays the stockmarket.

The key of course is not to be average.

Well u can gamble in the market just like Vegas. If u do not know what u r doing then u r gambling.

Keep in mind that it depends on what ur strategy is.

If u r trader, long term could be 15 minuets or less.

If u r planning for retirement, long term could be 15-30 years.

If u have all ur money in a single stock, that is EXTREMELY RISKY, u r correct with above assumptions. This has ALWAYS been true.

For most people, the best & easiest way to not have to spend a lot of time worrying about the day-to-day markets & if time is on ur side say 15+ years, then l would be Dollar Cost Averaging each week or bi-monthly or min once per month into major market indexes such as the S&P 500.

Here u have the 500 largest companies in a diversified index. You can have a number of failures & u can still do well. Failed companies r replaced by stronger companies.

Dollar Cost Averaging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging

S&P 500 Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&P_500

Well the House always wins just the same. If you do not think so then you must believe that you know who is running the House erroneously..