USA Today has a great article on what investments you can buy and hold for the next 50 years.
We asked several people, all of whom seem pretty good at making money in 2007, what they would buy and hold for 50 years. Their answers were instructive, to say the least.
Ralph Wanger ran the Acorn fund (LACAX) from 1970 to 2003, earning a name as one of the best small-company stock funds in the country. Wanger had three suggestions:
•High-quality Chinese art. As China grows and prospers, the Chinese will have more money for luxuries, such as art. Chinese art is already booming: A painting by Liu Xiaodong, a contemporary Chinese artist, sold for $2.7 million in November.
•Midwest farmland. A booming population is enough to make farmland valuable in 50 years. But corn, used for producing ethanol, may become increasingly valuable as oil supplies dwindle in the next half-century. Jim Rogers, investment guru and former hedge-fund manager, likes agricultural land in Latin America, where water is reasonably plentiful.
•Urban real estate. But only if it’s near a large water supply. Wanger suggests Chicago.
Water was a major theme for many of the people we talked to. Tom Marsico, founder of the Marsico funds, suggests investing in water in the western USA, where water is already getting scarce.
Another natural resource is also likely to be in demand 50 years from now: gold. Ned Davis, head of Ned Davis Research, would put his money on gold for 2057. "One of the safest bets for the foreseeable future is that the dollar will go down, which suggests that gold will go up," he says.
Your best long-term investment is probably a low-cost stock index fund: The past 50 years, stocks have returned an average 10.73%, according to Ibbotson Associates. But if you really want to impress Ralph — or his 2057 equivalent — you might think about Chinese art, water or gold.