the Main Street investor

Your Financial Edge is aimed at helping the individual investor—
the Main Street investor—deal with these and other important
changes in the investing environment:
• A world of lower returns on stocks and bonds, in part because
inflation has been contained. In fact, the steady battle
to tame inflation in the past three decades provided a better
earnings environment for investors than they will find in the
post-battle environment of contained inflation.
• A world where globalization continues at full pace and the
dollar is not king.
• A world where your best market will not be on Wall Street
but in emerging market countries abroad.
• A world where returns will depend a lot more on the skills of
professional investment managers, like those running mutual
funds, because more investing will need to be done abroad,
in environments unfamiliar to do-it-yourself investors.
• A world where diversification into bonds and commodity
investments is as important as diversification into markets
abroad.
• A world where investors will be living longer, and confronting
the need to get better returns so they can build a
bigger nest egg to make their savings last longer. Many may
have to do this without the safety net of all or part of the
pension that was promised to them by their employers and,
most likely, with less help than they hoped to get from Social
Security.