There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate:
when he can’t afford it and when he can.

Mark Twain

Today, one of the hottest areas to invest in is artificial intelligence and everyone is trying to understand where best to put their money. At B.S.F.S. Investment Advisors, we turn to history for our answers. In the 1980’s, personal computers and then the internet were beginning to experience tremendous growth. It’s easy to look back with regret over missed investment opportunities. But, at the time, which company should you have invested in?

At B.S.F.S. Investment Advisors, we specialize in investing in mutual funds. One of their biggest benefits is stability through diversification, because each fund owns, on average, over 60 stocks. The benefit of an individual stock is that you could make a home run, yet you could also strike out if a company goes out of business. Therefore, in the 1980’s, you couldn’t have just put all your money in one stock and hoped for the best, you had to spread your money out. Below is a chart which shows how you would have done if you had invested $60,000 in our Fidelity Technology fund from 1987 – August 2023 versus $10,000 each in 6 major players in personal computing in 1987. As you can see, our Technology Fund outperformed the return of the 6 individual companies. If you had only chosen Apple, you would have done tremendously well, a grand slam. However, if you had only chosen any other of the six you would have either lost your investment because the company went out of business or had terrible returns. That is why we don’t chase returns, we consistently invest according to an investment’s Longevity, Opportunity, Returns, Diversity and Stability.