Faculty & Leadership Blog / Faculty in the News

The Rich Get Richer, and So Can You…

Around this time of year, after having just paid taxes, do you find yourself grumbling about the difficulty of getting ahead with your savings?  If so, then perhaps recent academic research can help.  Our paper, just published in the Journal of Index Investing, shows that the rich are absolutely getting richer.  However, the good news is that many Billionaires generate wealth through their own publicly traded stocks.  This means that the everyday investor can get richer, too. The stocks that helped put the Billionaires on the Forbes list, held as a portfolio, tend to outperform the market.  This is especially true when the market is positive.  But buyer beware:  in years in which the stock markets go down, Billionaires’ stocks also decline.  Billionaires’ stocks might plummet, so it is important for investors to hold a complete portfolio.  This trading rule does not work every year, but it tends to be pretty consistent.  The markets are already positive in 2012 and may go higher still.  Should investors download the Forbes Billionaires list and start investing today?

Performance of Billionaire Index

Professor Joel Shulman
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship
Forbes Blog