I contend that you only need to know one number to know whether an investment is good or not. That number is the relative performance of the investment versus the S&P. Let’s take an example. Your investment is up over the past 10 years by a factor of 3. First you take 3 to the 1/10 power and you end up with 1.12 which means a 12% compound annual return. The S&P over the same time period has a return of 13% per year. Your investment has a minus 1 relative performance.

Every investment can be evaluated this way and you end up with a scale that goes from about -30 to +20. Your worst investment is probably-30 and Stars over the last 15 years is +19.

Every financial advisor should be able to provide you with this information but they don’t and the reason is their investment recommendations have negative relative performance values. You would be better off owning the S&P than what they recommend.

Ask your financial advisor for ideas that have a track record of beating the S&P. If they don’t have any ideas ask them to review “Earn Twice the S&P”. If they are not comfortable with Stars you only have the choice of owning the S&P or learning about Stars and doing it yourself. You have the book and my website that has detailed results of all 8 versions and 250 blogs that describe Stars. Questions are always welcome.