[quote=FlyerInHi]
I like real estate more then stocks because in a financial collapse, real estate that’s paid off will always generate rents to allow you to live comfortably. I was reading about some German families who survived WWI and WWII thanks to real estate. Even in the dark days of Communism, families in China who didn’t have their real estate expropriated did well.[/quote]
Paid off real estate is certainly a good thing to have in a financial collapse but so few people actually have paid off real estate. Prices in real estate are set at the margin and they are highly dependent on leverage. As a place to stay, as a place to produce some income from rent, yeah. A store a value not so much because a lot of the value is established by the next guy being able to leverage up.
Stocks are probably the first thing to get hammered. They’re highly discretionary. Dividend paying stocks probably have some kind of floor but it’s easy to envision a stock market that is at least 50% and perhaps 90% off in a financial collapse. Japan’s stock market is still trading at less than 50% of it’s bubble level 25 years later.
