No, you would have lost money.
If you'd put $1,000/mo. into the Nikkei from '86-'98, you would have invested 13 x 12 x $1,000 for a total of $156,000. Allowing a 1% dividend yield (I have prices off Yahoo), you end with.. $111,806. Investing in T-Bills in the same manner, you'd have $223,296.
Granted, this discounts the concomitant move in the yen, so perhaps you'd have broken even in dollar terms -- while investing for over ten years in a volatile asset class. In the S&P, you'd have ended up, not with $100, $200, or $300 thousand, but $597,103. Even small cap US stocks would have been OK -- you end with $369,742.
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