Investor returns from crowdfunding
"Crowdfunding can be a legitimate means of funding very small startups. It is an innovative, but obviously risky, method of raising small amounts of money. As such it is now regulated by the SEC under ""Regulation Crowdfunding"" They have published guides for these types of business startups to help them with required disclosures and reporting requirements: https://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/secg/rccomplianceguide-051316.htm Here's the introduction to the relevant regulatory authority of the SEC: Under the Securities Act of 1933, the offer and sale of securities must be registered unless an exemption from registration is available.  Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012 added Securities Act Section 4(a)(6) that provides an exemption from registration for certain crowdfunding transactions.[2]  In 2015, the Commission adopted Regulation Crowdfunding to implement the requirements of Title III.[3]  Under the rules, eligible companies will be allowed to raise capital using Regulation Crowdfunding starting May 16, 2016. It is obviously a new form of investment but you should be able to get historical data on the SEC's real time Edgar reporting system once there is some history. This is a search for all Form C's filed as of 12/2/16"
"This page from simplestockinvesting.com gives details of total returns for the S&P500 for each decade over the last 60 years, including total returns for the entire 60 year period. It is important to understand that, from an investors point of view, the total return includes both the change in index value (capital gain) plus dividends received.  This total then needs to be adjusted for inflation to give the ""total real return"". As noted in the analysis provided, 44% of the total return from the S&P500 over the last 80 years comes from dividends.  For the DowJones30, this site provides a calculator for total returns and inflation adjusted total returns for user selected periods. Finding comparable analysis for the NASDAQ market is more difficult.  The NASDAQ market site provides gross values for total returns over fixed periods, but you will then need to do the arithmetic to calculate the equivalent average annual total returns.  No inflation adjusted values for ""real"" returns are provided, so again you will need to combine inflation data from elsewhere and do the arithmetic." Stock prices aren't constant; they rise and fall.   The overall return on a share is the combination of the dividends paid plus the change in value of the share.  Some companies pay no dividend at all yet investors still buy their shares because they believe the share price will rise. People invest in stocks because they believe that the overall return will exceed what they can get from cash in the bank.   As to options they do offer higher potential profits but they also offer higher potential losses.  Different investors have different appetites for risk.  Many are comfortable with the risk of mainstream stock investing but not with that of options trading. (After seeing your most recent comment on the original question, it looks like others have answered the question you intended, and described the extreme difficulty of getting the timing right the way you're trying to. Since I've already typed it up, what follows answers what I originally thought your question was, which was asking if there were drawbacks to investing entirely in money market funds to avoid stock volatility altogether.) Money market funds have the significant drawback that they offer low returns. One of the fundamental principles in finance is that there is a trade-off between low risk and high returns. While money market funds are extremely stable, their returns are paltry; under current market conditions, you can consider them roughly equivalent to cash. On the other hand, though investing in stocks puts your money on a roller coaster, returns will be, on average, substantially higher. Since people often invest in order to achieve personal financial stability, many feel naturally attracted to very stable investments like money market funds. However, this tendency can be a big mistake. The higher returns of the stock market don't merely serve to stoke an investor's greed, they are necessary for achieving most people's financial goals. For example, consider two hypothetical investors, saving for retirement over the course of a 40-year career. The first investor, apprehensive Adam, invests $10k per year in a money market fund. The second investor, brave Barbara, invests $10k per year in an S&P 500 index fund (reinvesting dividends). Let's be generous and say that Adam's money market fund keeps pace with inflation (in reality, they typically don't even do that). At the end of 40 years, in today's money, Adam will have $10,000*40 = $400,000, not nearly enough to retire comfortably on. On the other hand, let's assume that Barbara gets returns of 7% per year after inflation, which is typical (though not guaranteed). Barbara will then have, using the formula for the future value of an annuity, $10,000 * [(1.07)^40 - 1] / 0.07, or about $2,000,000, which is much more comfortable. While Adam's strategy produces nearly guaranteed results, those results are actually guaranteed failure. Barbara's strategy is not a guarantee, but it has a good chance of producing a comfortable retirement. Even if her timing isn't great, over these time scales, the chances that she will have more money than Adam in the end are very high. (I won't produce a technical analysis of this claim, as it's a bit complicated. Do more research if you're interested.) "The answer to your question depends on what you mean when you say ""growth"".  If you mean a literal increase in the aggregate market capitalization of companies, across the entire market, then, no, this sort of growth is not possible without concomitant economic growth.  The reason why is that the market capitalization of each company is proportional to its gross revenue, and the sum of all revenue from selling ""final goods"" (i.e., things purchased and used by consumers) is, apart from a few technicalities, the definition of GDP.  The exact multiplier might fluctuate up or down depending on investors' expectations about how sales will grow or decline going forward, but in a zero-growth economy this multiplier should be stable over the long run.  It might, however, still fluctuate over the short term, but more about that in a minute.   Note that all of this applies to aggregate growth across all firms.  Individual firms can still grow, of course, but as they must do this by gaining market share from other companies such growth would be balanced by a decline for some other firm.  Also, I've assumed zero net exports (that's one of the ""technicalities"" I mentioned above) because obviously you could have export-driven growth even if the domestic economy were stationary. However, often when people talk about ""growth"" in the market, what they really mean is ""return"".  That is, how much does your investment earn for you.  This isn't really the same thing as growth, but people often think of it that way, particularly in the saving phase of their investing career, when they are reinvesting their returns, and therefore their account balances are growing.  It is possible to have a positive return, averaged across the market, even in a stationary economy.  The reason why is that there are really only two things a firm can do with its net profits.  One possibility is that it could invest it in growing the business.  However, there is not much point in doing that in a stationary economy because by assumption no increase in aggregate consumption (and therefore, in the long run, aggregate production) are possible.  Therefore, firms are left with only the second option, which is to pay them out to investors as dividends.  Those dividends provide a return that is independent of economic growth. Would the stock market still be a good investment in such an economy?  Yes.  Well, sort of.  The rate of return from firms' dividend payouts will depend on investors' demand (in aggregate) for returns on their investments.  Stock prices will rise or fall, causing returns to respectively fall or rise, to find that level.  If your personal desire for returns is lower than the average across the investing public, then the stock market would look like a good investment.  If your desired return is higher than the average, then it will look like a poor investment.  The marginal investor will, of course be indifferent.  The practical upshot of this is that the people who invest in the stock market in this scenario will be precisely the ones for whom the stock market is a good investment, given their personal propensity to save and desire for returns, and so forth. Finally, you mentioned that in your scenario the GDP stagnation is due to declining population.  I am less certain what this means for investment, but my first thought is that you would have a large retired population selling its investments to fund late-life consumption, and you would have a comparatively small (relative to history) working population buying those assets.  This would lead to low asset prices, and therefore high rates of return.  However, that's assuming that retirees need to sell assets to fund their retirement consumption.  If the absolute returns on retirees' assets are large enough to fund their retirement consumption then you would wind up with relatively few sellers, resulting in high prices and therefore relatively low rates of return.  It's not obvious to me which effect would dominate, and so it's hard to say whether or not the resulting returns would look attractive to the working-age population." "As an exercise, I want to give this a shot.  I'm not involved in a firm that cares about liquidity so all this stuff is outside my purview.  As I understand it, it goes something like this: buy side fund puts an order to the market as a whole (all or most possibly exchanges).  HFTs see that order hit the first exchange but have connectivity to exchanges further down the pipe that is faster than the buy side fund.  They immediately send their own order in, which reaches exchanges and executes before the buy side fund's order can.  They immediately put up an ask, and buy side fund's order hits that ask and is filled (I guess I'm assuming the order was a market order from the beginning).  This is in effect the HFT front running the buy side fund.    Is this accurate?  Even if true, whether I have a genuine issue with this... I'm not sure.  Has anyone on the ""pro-HFT"" side written a solid rebuttal to Lewis and Katsuyama that has solid research behind it?" "The fund will take a small percentage of its assets to cover the expenses.  Reported returns come after the expense ratio has been factored into things. Money market mutual funds can have a zero yield in some cases though breaking the buck can happen in some cases as noted on Wikipedia: The first money market mutual fund to break the buck was First   Multifund for Daily Income (FMDI) in 1978, liquidating and restating   NAV at 94 cents per share. An argument has been made that FMDI was not   technically a money market fund as at the time of liquidation the   average maturity of securities in its portfolio exceeded two years.[7]   However, prospective investors were informed that FMDI would invest   ""solely in Short-Term (30-90 days) MONEY MARKET obligations.""   Furthermore, the rule, which restricts the maturities which money   market funds are permitted to invest in, Rule 2-a7 of the Investment   Company Act of 1940, was not promulgated until 1983. Prior to the   adoption of this rule, a mutual fund had to do little other than   present itself as a money market fund, which FMDI did. Seeking higher   yield, FMDI had purchased increasingly longer maturity securities and   rising interest rates negatively impacted the value of its portfolio.   In order to meet increasing redemptions the fund was forced to sell a   certificate of deposit at a 3% loss, triggering a restatement of its   NAV and the first instance of a money market fund ""breaking the   buck"". The Community Bankers US Government Fund broke the buck in 1994,   paying investors 96 cents per share. This was only the second failure   in the then 23-year history of money funds and there were no further   failures for 14 years. The fund had invested a large percentage of its   assets into adjustable rate securities. As interest rates increased,   these floating rate securities lost value. This fund was an   institutional money fund, not a retail money fund, thus individuals   were not directly affected. No further failures occurred until September 2008, a month that saw   tumultuous events for money funds. However, as noted above, other   failures were only averted by infusions of capital from the fund   sponsors. Thus consider how likely is Fidelity Investments prepared to have people question how safe is their money with them which is why fund sponsors rarely break the buck." "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-26/mike-novogratz-is-set-for-comeback-with-crytocurrency-hedge-fund) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Novogratz will put up $150 million of his own money and plans to raise $350 million more by January, mainly from family offices, wealthy individuals and fellow hedge fund managers, said a person familiar with his plans.  &gt; For Novogratz, 52, the fund marks a comeback to professional money management after humbling losses at Fortress and almost two years of self-imposed exile from Wall Street.  &gt; With a $500 million hedge fund, Novogratz will be able to capture trading opportunities that require more scale, as well as wield influence with developers, entrepreneurs and regulators.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/72ofsc/mike_novogratz_is_forming_a_500mil_crypto_hedge/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~217166 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **Novogratz**^#1 **fund**^#2 **trade**^#3 **bitcoin**^#4 **way**^#5" If you mean the internal rate of return, then the quarterly rate of return which would make the net present value of these cash flows to be zero is 8.0535% (found by goal seek in Excel), or an equivalent compound annual rate of 36.3186% p.a. The net present value of the cash flows is: 10,000 + 4,000/(1+r) - 2,000/(1+r)^2 - 15,125/(1+r)^3, where r is the quarterly rate. If instead you mean Modified Dietz return, then the net gain over the period is: End value - start value - net flow = 15,125 - 10,000 - (4,000 - 2,000) = 3,125 The weighted average capital invested over the period is: 1 x 10,000 + 2/3 x 4,000 - 1/3 x 2,000 = 12,000 so the Modified Dietz return is 3,125 / 12,000 = 26.0417%, or 1.260417^(1/3)-1 = 8.0201% per quarter, or an equivalent compound annual rate of 1.260417^(4/3)-1 = 36.1504%. You are using an inappropriate formula, because we know for a fact that the flows take place at the beginning/end of the period. Instead, you should be combining the returns for the quarters (which have in fact been provided in the question). To calculate this, first calculate the growth factor over each quarter, then  link them geometrically to get the overall growth factor. Subtracting 1 gives you the overall return for the 3-quarter period. Then convert the result to a quarterly rate of return. Growth factor in 2012 Q4 is 11,000/10,000 = 1.1 Growth factor in 2013 Q1 is 15,750/15,000 = 1.05 Growth factor in 2013 Q2 is 15,125/13,750 = 1.1 Overall growth factor is 1.1 x 1.05 x 1.1 = 1.2705 Return for the whole period is 27.05% Quarterly rate of return is 1.2705^(1/3)-1 = 8.3074% Equivalent annual rate of return is 1.2705^(4/3)-1 = 37.6046% ========= I'd recommend you to refer to Wikipedia.