With Forbes magazine having just released its ranking of billionaires, Mark Hulbert, editor of Hulbert Financial Digest, notes that most of them amassed their wealth through building companies, not investing.
"The Forbes list helps us to become more realistic about what is possible through investing," he writes on
MarketWatch.
"And that, in turn, should refocus our energies on what truly produces great wealth. It is not the stock market."
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The No. 1 route to joining the billionaires list was starting a company, with inheritance a distant second, Hulbert says.
"What about investing? Did anyone make it onto the list by following shrewd investment strategies, parlaying a small portfolio on Wall Street into a nine-figure sum?" Hulbert asks.
"No."
He says it's not even certain that Warren Buffett, fourth on the list, made it there through investing.
"And even if he did, it's not clear how much you can generalize, since you would need to already have a profitable insurance operation whose float can finance a highly-leveraged strategy of acquiring some companies and heavily investing in others," Hulbert writes.
"If you really want to act and think like a billionaire, focus your entrepreneurial energies on producing something that the world needs. The stock market will be there after you make your fortune."
The Forbes list is headed by Bill Gates with $76 billion. He's followed by Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu and family with $72 billion, Spain's Amancio Ortega with $64 billion, Buffett with $58.2 billion, Larry Ellison with $48 billion, Charles and David Koch with $40 billion each and Sheldon Adelson with $38 billion.
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