come from capital gain, I will believe what you said and would like you to share your experences here often. If not, I'd like to quote from a former Chairman: 'Naive. Too simple.'.
You listed some stocks that achieved tremendous gain over the years. But can you pick some which will do the same in the future? It's harder that you think. I can also give you some example that people made lots of money in real estate. But they are all individual cases.
There are two advantages with real estate investing:
1. Control. By investing in stock, you have no control over the company direction and hard to prevent management from stealing from you (agency problem). Martin Whitman said control worth at least 30% of the stock value. That's why you see company be acquired at 50% or even 100% premium over their market value.
2. Leverage. In real estate, you can get at least get 4 times leverage through mortgage. Even though you see house value appreciate same or slower than the stock market, after leverage, you gain is higher. If you always stick with positive cash flow, the housing market crash like the one we are in not really bother you. But for stock market, it's different expecially if you use margin.
