If you have doubts about investing in shares, you only have to take a single look at the yield triangle of the Deutsches Aktieninstitut (DAI).

That’s enough.

Blue stands for rising prices and blue predominates.

If you have enough information to be convinced, you can buy any Dax ETF and you won't be dissatisfied when you look at the result in ten, twenty or thirty years.

The same will happen to those who prefer to finance the jobs of fund managers and analysts.

He buys an actively managed equity fund.

It's more expensive, but sometimes even better than the ETF.

But sometimes worse, you don't know beforehand.

The bottom line is that this form of investment has paid off over the past few decades.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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If you want to know the details, you can take a closer look at the yield triangle.

At the very top right in the corner is a 16. The Dax rose by this percentage in 2021.

If you go down the long stairs at the top of the triangle, you can see the Dax development over the years.

Four percent despite the corona shock in 2020, 25 percent in 2019, minus 18 percent for 2018. Such minus years do occur, but they are not the rule, but the exception on the German stock market.

Counting back to 1949, it happened 21 times.

Increasing prices, however, 52 times.

And these losses never lasted long.

Usually it only took one to two years to balance them out. To do this, the view from the upper edge of the stairs must wander into the triangle, sooner or later it will always turn blue. In other words: the longer the investment period, the higher the probability of having made a profit with the equity exposure. The black staircase in the triangle for an investment period of 25 years, for example, shows average annual returns of 5 to 15 percent. At 20 years it is 1 to 21 percent, at 15 years 1 to 27 percent, at ten years minus 2 to plus 33 percent. Those who, however, have 30 years of patience and thus the usual recommended savings period for old-age provision, came to average annual values ​​of 7 to 14 percent - before taxes. So a clear realization isthat with a longer investment horizon the stock returns stabilize and ultimately level off around their long-term expected average of around 8 percent.

A lot can go wrong with individual stocks

But that only applies to the Dax as a whole, a group of mostly 30, most recently 40 stocks.

The public image of shares, however, is shaped by the spectacular crashes of individual stocks such as the Telekom share in the years 2000 to 2003 or the Wirecard share in 2020.

They show that stocks are a business investment and that involvement can go wrong.

A look at an index, however, shows that entrepreneurial activity is ultimately successful and that venture capitalists, who are shareholders, are appropriately rewarded for their willingness to take risks.

The second clear insight of the triangle is therefore: investing in many stocks at the same time drastically reduces the investor's risk.

If you entrust your money to 30 or 40 companies, you run a much lower risk than if you put everything on one card.

The Deutsches Aktieninstitut also enables a view of the return triangles of individual companies.

The red impacts are sometimes much larger than on the Dax as a whole.

There is no wrong time

So if you take two things to heart - broad investment spread and patience - you will get the return of the triangle shown for the Dax as a result.

Not guaranteed, these are all values ​​from the past.

But why should the future suddenly look completely different, why should the urge for innovation and entrepreneurial optimization no longer pay off?

More and more people are realizing the advantage of investing in stocks.

By the end of September, the German fund association BVI reported 43 billion euros in net inflows into equity funds, more than in any other category - 25 billion euros flowed into actively managed funds and 18 billion euros into ETFs.

Savings plans are being taken out more and more frequently.

This reduces the risk of an unfavorable entry point.

Incidentally, there is currently no wrong here.

With a good 16,000 points, the Dax is close to its record high.

Almost every Dax entry point has been worth it so far.

In 2021 there were nevertheless better stock indices than the Dax.

The global industrialized countries index MSCI World was up 30 percent.

The American Nasdaq or Italian and French stocks also performed better.

But those are details.

However, there was no interest on the overnight account.

Custody fees were even due more and more frequently.

A look at the yield triangle could therefore be all the more worthwhile.