Monday 5 October 2009

The Rich get poorer

As reported in the SMH the total wealth of the wealthiest Americans fell by 300 billion dollars in the past twelve months. The 400 wealthiest Americans saw their total net assets drop from 1.57 trillion US dollars to 1.27 trillion - a decrease of 19%. That's somewhat less than the decrease in my net worth since it's peak in 2007, but I don't feel too bad as the Forbes list would benefit from survivor bias - after all, 32 plutocrats fell completely off the list when their wealth fell below the new, $950 million cut-off (reduced by 27% from the previous year) and were replaced by some new super-rich folk.

I benchmark my net worth performance against 1% of the cut-off value for entry into the annual BRW "rich list". A similar benchmark for US readers would by 0.1% of the Forbes 400 list threshold (ie. $1.3m last year, and $950k this year). The logic behind this benchmarking is that, presumably, the richest people know how to invest well (or at least can afford the best advice), so their performance is a proxy for "best in class".

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1 comment:

Robert said...

The rich get poorer, but they're still rich. Better than being poor and getting richer and still being poor. See where I'm going with this?