Owning shares is worth more than lottery games

Stock market fluctuations and bleak economic prospects back or forth: in the long term, it is more profitable to invest in equities than in lottery tickets.

Playing the lottery must be a great thing. More than 21 million Germans have done it before. According to the theory of swarm intelligence that would mean: In any case, gambling is better than owning shares. After all, there are hardly half as many shareholders as Lottotipper.

Some people who look at the development of stock prices may feel confirmed and think: “After the rapid stock rally in the first quarter, the air is out, I’d rather continue to put my crosses on the coupon.

The error could hardly be greater. How big it is can be calculated. The US analysts of Ned Davis Research present figures for Wall Street. New York provides the longest data series undisturbed by wars. After that, the first quarter with gains in equities in each of the three months January to March is not an alarm signal, but on the contrary a brightening of sentiment.

There have been 22 such periods over the past almost one hundred years. And in 20 of these, the remaining three quarters of the year delivered profits, on average 7.2 percent overall. This should also be a good omen for the German market. It is moving in the slipstream of the most important financial market, Wall Street. Statistically, for example, the traffic light is green for the rest of the year.

And what about gambling? What is the probability of hitting the jackpot? It is worse than miserable. Statistically, a lotto fan has to play about 14 million times in order to get the “6 out of 49” right. Realistically speaking, that will practically never happen.

And the German shareholder? How did he perform, how did he look beyond quarterly results? Over the past decades, he has made an average profit of nine percent every year, despite several major stock market slumps. All the shareholder had to do was stay invested.

According to experts, future earnings are likely to fall. But even slightly lower investment returns will bring a lot of money into the pockets in the longer term: the shareholder rewards himself, while the lottery lover goes away empty-handed. So a clear case: this time the smaller swarm can adorn itself with the adjective “intelligent”.