Something No One Needs

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The WSJ ran an article over the weekend noting that it will soon be easier for individual investors to access things like private placements and other forms of earlier stage investments thanks to the JOBS Act of 2012.

Everyone views these things differently of course but there is nothing simple about early stage investing and reducing the barriers to entry for this space strikes me as a terrible idea to be avoided.   If various barriers are being reduced or eliminated it opens the door to companies with relatively weak investment merits becoming available to a population of investors who may not be able to adequately evaluate such companies.

Studying private companies with less stringent reporting requirements is obviously a much different level of analysis than studying AT&T (T) or Proctor & Gamble (PG). This will probably be pitched as democratizing and good for America and that might be true but the net effect for individuals that invest will probably be that they get separated from the money they put up.

The building block here is that with an adequate savings a portfolio of a few diverse broad based funds gives a good shot of having enough when you need it, provided panicked reactions are minimized. Note that the context here is not about beating the market it is about having enough money when you need it.

Short post, we are flying out to Boston later today.