Laclede Gas Company: Fill & Download for Free

You’re thinking the right way, but your timeline is a little long for individual stock purchases. Warren Buffet has always stressed buying shares in companies where you would feel comfortable if you went away for 10 years and couldn’t sell the shares. I think that’s great advice, and wish more investors would look for quality value stocks instead of chasing trends.However, 50 years is too long of a time frame for any single company. Technology just moves too fast, and every business has been disrupted. There is no guarantee that any company in the US will be around in 50 years, or even look the same way. Automotive, consumer goods, utility companies, banking, medicine, mining… who knows. Of the original 12 companies in the Dow Jones Index (American Cotton Oil, American Sugar, American Tobacco, Chicago Gas, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, General Electric, Laclede Gas, National Lead, North American, Tennesee Coal & Iron, U.S. Leather preferred, and U.S. Rubber) only one is still around.Your best long term investment is just to buy the index for the S&P 500 (SPY) and/or the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) and hold it. The companies in these indexes are automatically shuffled based on their size and market position. To qualify, companies must meet liquidity, size and financial viability requirements, and must be incorporated in the United States. Every year about 25 - 30 companies are dropped and replaced with others. (Ins and Outs of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Historical components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, List of S&P 500 companies)They are the best index funds in the world, and here are their returns for the past +50 years…Or as Warren Buffet would put it:Hope this was helpful! If it was, please upvote the answer so more people will see it. If you’re looking for more answers like this one on Investing and Wealth, follow me on Quora

American Cotton Oil, American Sugar, American Tobacco, Chicago Gas, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, General Electric, Laclede Gas, National Lead, North American Company, Tennessee Coal & Iron, U.S. Leather and U.S. Rubber.There were the original members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the original stock index. A similar list of quaint companies could be provided for other indices. What we have today will appear old-fashioned in 50 years as well.That's the general problem you have with believing that the index is always right. The market is only efficient because everyone tries to do better, because everyone is poking and pushing for an advantage. If we stopped doing that and all of us, including the government, stuck to a static index, it would soon be filled with obsolete companies in obsolete industries.Now you might say, ah, but when the index changes, that is when we know it is "safe" to invest in. But the index changes based on market cap changes. The index change reflects the judgement of investors, of the flow of investment dollars.In the end you cannot have the efficiency of a free market absent a free market. The free market is what makes the market efficient.

Nobody knows. But remember some facts here:GE is the only stock on the major US indexes that has been there from the beginningNobody thought they would ever need a bailout, in fact the US government was thinking about nationalizing it at one stageNobody believed Apple would come back, like they did after Steve Jones’ had his second spell at the company.Few saw Lehman Brothers going bankrupt.Few saw Woolworths bankruptcy in the UK comingFew saw General Motors comingHere are the companies on the original Dow:American Cotton Oil – Now part of Unilever.American Sugar –Now part of Domino Foods.American Tobacco – Now Fortune BrandsChicago Gas – Now part of Integers Energy.Distilling & Cattle Feeding – Now part of Millennium Chemicals.GE - Still on the indexLaclede Gas – Now as the primary subsidiary of the Laclede Group.National Lead – Changed its name to NL Industries in 1971North American – DissolvedTennessee Coal Iron and RR – Acquired in 1907U.S. Leather – Vanished/dissolvedUnited States Rubber – Uniroyal in 1950s then with B.F. Goodrich in 1986.So apart from GE, none of the original companies are on the index, and the rest are weaker than before.This company is also struggling compared to before. Sony. Some fantastic products in the 1980s and 1990s. Struggling much more now.One of the reasons why DIY investors fail is they try to predict which individual stocks will rise and fall which is irrational -Does DIY investing work?There are too many unknown unknowns and known unknowns to predict that.Maybe Google will innovate or maybe they won’t.