A new breed of stock investor has arrived on the scene as a result of both the extremely strong bull market over the last four to five years and the accessibility to real-time quotes and online trading. Tangible assets include collectibles such as art, coins, stamps and real estate. Cash includes marketable securities with maturities less than one year. Debt includes longer-term notes and bonds, such as corporate, municipal, government agency and Treasury bonds.
Equities are stocks and represent ownership in the firms that issued the stocks.
A periodic cash stream may be realized from stock ownership in the form of dividends and the stock may appreciate in value in the form of capital gains. The Role of Equities Equities have three major roles in portfolio management and asset allocation. The first role is the creation of wealth. On an annually compounded basis, equities have returned approximately 114 times the wealth realized when investing in Treasury bills alone and 15 times the wealth when investing in Treasury bonds alone. Equities truly created wealth over the long term.