To most people, investment is like playing a video game in a language you don’t understand. While you can see things happening on the screen and deduce the basics of what is happening from those images, at the same time it is impossible for you to really go any further. Just as this can be overcome by learning the language of the video game, so too can it be overcome in investment through study. At different points in time, stocks and land switch back and forth between being the better investment, depending on what they are doing at that point and what they are expected to do in the future. When these four areas are looked at today, they all point towards land being a better investment than stocks.
Stocks at Present
Stocks at the moment are at the point where they are about to start declining in large amounts. The economy is in a recession and the GDP has started to shrink. Job growth is being affected and companies are being forced to lay off thousands of their workers. When all of these things are put together, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that stocks are at a point where they can not grow any larger. For this reason, the stock outlook at present is quite pessimistic.
Stocks in the Future
At the current moment in time, it is expected that the world is going to experience one of the most severe recessions it has ever had. While it likely will not be as bad as the depression era, at the same time many of the international companies are going to be shrinking in leaps and bounds. For that reason, in the future it is expected that stocks are going to decline even more than many of them are doing in the present day. Buying low only to sell lower is a terrible investment strategy and it is not one that anybody with the least amount of sense would pursue.
Land at Present
While the stocks are at the point where they are about to burst, land prices have already deflated in massive amounts recently. The real estate bubble within the United States and the rest of the developed world collapsed more than a year ago and for that reason land prices have plummeted. At the same time, when you look at land prices currently, in many parts of the country they are beginning to stabilize again. This means that the optimal point at the bottom of the trough in the price curve has either been reached or is likely to be reached soon.
Land in the Future
If the optimal point at the bottom of the trough has already been reached, then land prices can only go up. If the optimal point is about to be reached soon, then the land that you invest in today might decrease in value slightly, but then it will start to increase soon enough. In both of these scenarios you make money. Land is therefore a winning investment right now while stocks are a losing investment and that in turn makes land a better investment at present than stocks.