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I want to continue to reiterate this point about the Great American Tailwind. For most people, especially people who are not beating the market, it is in their best interest to go along with the market and ride the Great American Tailwind, which you can do buying an exchange‐traded fund—a.k.a. ETF—that gives you exposure to the major indices. They are very liquid and can be bought in just about any trading account.

For more than two centuries, the U.S. stock market has enjoyed a very strong upward bias. Warren Buffett calls this phenomenon the American Tailwind. I call it the Great American Tailwind. The legendary investor coined the term in his 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual letter where, reflecting on his 77‐year trading career, he noted that if his first trade of $114.75, made in 1942, “had been invested in a no‐fee S&P 500 index fund, and all dividends had been reinvested,” his pretax stake would have been worth $606,811 on January 31, 2019. His point is that America, born in revolution, a survivor of the Civil War and the Great Depression, has experienced an “almost unbelievable prosperity” that is so persistent that a child could invest a sum in an unmanaged American equities market during the darkest days of a global war and achieve a gain of “$5,288 for 1.”

Now, a note of caution: the American Tailwind does not apply to other markets such as currencies or commodities, or to other stock markets around the world. Over the past few centuries, neither the price of the greenback (the U.S. dollar), nor commodities such as oil, corn, sugar, or gold have enjoyed the same explosive run as U.S. equities. In fact, as of this writing, just about no other liquid publicly traded market in the world that has been around as long as the U.S. stock market has matched its long‐term success. In the future, that may change, but for now, it establishes the baseline for American investors—a persistent upward trend that can create life‐changing wealth for you and your family.