Go back through history and you will not find a single example of a public company that increased its earnings quarter after quarter and year after year without the share price tagging along. Conversely, you will not find a single example of a company's share price appreciating if it kept reporting declining sales and earnings quarter after quarter. Even in a rip-roaring bull market. Luck or chance has little to do with the direction of share prices over the long haul. Investors who correctly analyze the prospects of a business are rewarded with higher share prices and often bigger dividends. In the short to medium term, however, share prices can experience neck-snapping volatility. And that scares many folks. However, more people ought to be afraid of what will happen if they don't invest in stocks. Invest in Treasurys yielding less than 2%, for example, and you are likely to earn less than inflation. Leave your money in the bank earning 0.05%, and you are guaranteed a negative real return. Real estate is another alternative. But that requires either a very large chunk of money - something Americans living paycheck to paycheck clearly don't have - or leverage. As we learned in the housing meltdown over a decade ago, a big mortgage is a double-edged sword, magnifying not only your gains but your potential losses. Real estate also entails brokerage commissions, property taxes, homeowners insurance, maintenance, repairs, utilities and the hassles of managing tenants. And gold? Gold is not a productive asset. If you own an ounce of gold for 100 years (or a million years) and reinvest all the interest it accrues, the earnings it generates and all the dividends it pays - zero, in other words - you will have at the end of that period exactly what you started with: an ounce of gold. When investors today talk about TINA - "there is no alternative" (to stocks) - they aren't kidding. Equities are not just the best place - they are essentially the only place to put your serious money to work for the long haul. But what kind of equities should you buy? That's exactly what bestselling author Bill O'Reilly asked me in a recent interview. And my answer shocked and amazed him. You can view our conversation here. Good Investing, Alex | 
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