Definition of “secular” in the context of markets?
"According to Wikipedia: In the finance industry, something   done on a secular basis is done on a   long-term basis, not a temporary or   cyclical one, with a time frame of   ""10–50 years or more"" Source" Secular means a long term.  A secular basis is something done on a long term basis while a secular trend is a long term trend. http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Secular
What do you actually know about their methodology?  Do you have the raw data?  Do you know how they selected the sample?  Did they discover perfect random?  I would guess not. So that probably would mean 100 isnt correct in this context. Not that I doubt this study follows stats best practices perfectly or that the people running a study on employees about a company of a very wealthy individual would be objective/completely without ulterior motive and from some source I dont even actually know the full background of the people who made it but...  I'm non-partisan. I would also just ask, how did that election turn out again with the numerous polls and other research of 1000+, repeatedly at different times over a campaign that seemed to have been like 2+ years long?  Further I dont even know why we are talking about a study of 100 when theres glassdoor with more than 10,000 reviews though it isnt normalized or in an actual study format. The thing to note is that if you compare the types of employees to another tech company like lets say Google/Alphabet or Facebook you have a different distribution in the type of people recruited and that might effect their experience. Amazon does a lot of retail, support and call centers as compared to a lot of engineers with a more educated background. Both are people but theres definitely a difference in the type of person as well as their temperament you get if you go to lets say an urban wal-mart as compared to an Alphabet or Facebook engineer. Have to compare apples to apples and as far as this study goes I dont even know how they like them apples. While historical performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance, I like to look at the historical performance of the markets for context. Vanguard's portfolio allocation models is one source for this data. Twenty years is a long term timeline. If you're well diversified in passively managed index funds, you should be positioned well for the future.  You've lost nothing until it's realized or you sell. Meanwhile, you still own an asset that has value. As Warren Buffet says, buy low and sell high. "Usually it makes sense to invest in individual companies when you're investing in a ""hot"" sector. Secular funds have their own risks that can be difficult to measure. First Solar is one of the premier PV players. The fund gives you a false sense of diversification. If you bought a mutual fund in 2000 in the computer space, you'd have pieces of HP, Dell, Apple, IBM, EMC, Cisco, Intel etc. Did the sector perform the same as the companies in it? Nooo. As for renewable energy, IMO that ship has sailed for the ""pure play"" renewable stocks. I'd look at undervalued companies with exposure to renewables that haven't been hyped up. (or included in a sector mutual fund) Examples for this area?  The problem with this sector is that the industry is dependent on government subsidies, and the state of government budgets make that a risky play. Proceed with caution!" "I would differentiate between pricing and valuation a bit more:  Valuation is the result of investment analysis and the result of coming up with a fair value for a company and its shares; this is done usually by equity analysts. I have never heard about pricing a security in this context. Pricing would indicate that the price of a product or security is ""set"" by someone (i.e. a car manufacturer sets the prices of its new cars). The price of a security however is not set by an analyst or an institution, it is solely set by the stock market (perhaps based on the valuations of different analysts).  There is only one exception to this: pricing an IPO before its shares are actually traded on an exchange. In this case the underwriting banks set the price (based on the valuation) at which the shares are distributed." I think this could be changed quickly if they were forced to participate in the markets.  Sadly I spent 3 years of my bachelors degree in finance studying EMH. Only in my last year, in two classes we covered the disiquilibrium. Ethics and sources of meat aside, it's important to note the markets are currently not working. There are farm subsidies keeping the cost of meat low and many externalities generated from meat production (eg cow methane) which are paid for.by society and not the producer. Fix those issues and I'm right there with you! Not really.  If Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, *rather than by the state*, then the South Sea Bill was an example of trade and industry controlled by the State through State sponsored enterprise.  It is more a closely a description of State Socialism, with a large topping of Kleptocracy. Economics, the only field that you can be wrong more than you're right and still have credibility with mainstream society. Imagine if doctors, engineers or accountants were wrong more than they were right, what kind of a society would that create? Maybe we should expect more from people in a field who influence our economic futures.