📈 Main Topic: You Don’t Need Wall Street to Build Wealth

There’s a myth that investing is only for people with MBAs, insider tips, or spare fortunes. That’s not true.

Yes — you might be missing some knowledge. Yes — you might not know where to start. But that’s what this newsletter is here for. It’ll guide you step-by-step. It’s not that complicated.

Will you compete against the best hedge fund managers and Wall Street pros? No. But that’s not our goal.

The goal here is simple: that you feel confident enough to start investing — and stay consistent.

This week, we want to show you the power of investing, even if you ‘only’ get the market return.

By the way, did you know most fund managers don’t beat their benchmark?

Let’s take the S&P 500 as an example. If a fund manager uses the S&P 500 as a benchmark, it means they’re allowed to invest in the same group of stocks — the 500 biggest U.S. companies by market cap — but they can choose to overweight or underweight specific names. At the end of the year, their performance is compared to the index.

And most fail to outperform it.

Which means? We’d often be better off just investing in the S&P 500 ourselves, not paying high fees, and relaxing all year

📊 S&P 500 Growth: The Power of Time

Since its official creation in 1957, the S&P 500 has delivered massive long-term returns.

✅ 50-Year Snapshot (1975–2025):

• If you invested $100 in 1975, reinvesting dividends, you'd have about $28,000 today.

• That’s about an 11.9% average annual return.

• Adjusted for inflation, it’s still a solid 8% annual gain.

Even with major crashes — like Black Monday in 1987, the Dot-com bust, the 2008 crisis, and COVID-19 — long-term investors came out ahead.

📉 You can view the full chart from Yahoo Finance here:
→ S&P 500 Chart on Yahoo Finance

⚡ Quick Hit

• Golden Rule: Start before you’re ready. Consistency beats timing.

📚 Term of the Week: Index vs. ETF

• An Index (like the S&P 500) is just a list — it tracks how a group of companies is performing. You can't buy it directly.

• An ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund) is a real investment product that mimics that index — and you can buy it.

Think of it like this: the index is the recipe. The ETF is the actual meal.

✅ Your Thursday Mindset

You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to understand the long game.

This weekend, take 15 minutes to look up a 20-year period where the market didn’t perform spectacularly — like starting just before the 2000 dot-com crash. You’ll still find that long-term investing usually worked out.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”

See you next Thursday — we’ll look at brokers and how to choose one, because that’s your first real step toward investing.

S&P 500 CHART since 1985, yahoo finance

Warm regards,
Jean, CFA
Golden Bridge Wealth

www.goldenbridgewealth.com
📩 [email protected]

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