The Battle for Investment Survival

People expect too much of investment. They think, incorrectly, that they must always keep their money “working.”
If investment were merely what most people think it is—just buying something for income—fortunes would be extremely easy to establish by simply letting the money compound itself.
Capital compounded at 6% doubles itself in money value in only twelve years, and at 5% in little more than fourteen years. The fantastic results of this process were illustrated by the late Frank A. Vanderlip in a Saturday Evening Post story of January, 1933*. He pointed out that if the rich Medici family in Italy just six hundred years ago had set aside at 5% compound interest an investment fund equal to $100,000, its 1933 value would be $517,100,000,000,000,000 (five hundred and seventeen quadrillions). The original sum could have been represented by a globe of gold about nine

Knowledge born from actual experience is the answer to why one profits; lack of it is the reason one loses.