Philanthropy is not an investment for personal financial returns, it's an investment into a cause that you believe in, often for social rather than financial gains. A quote from Ng: "The whole intention [of my bid] was to support the National Gallery and the arts community," he says. "We're all playing our part in giving back to society... In bringing our art community to a further elevation. "I think that's more important, rather than who's having dinner at what prices." He had always intended to donate to the auction and had looked through the other lots to find something interesting - the dinner for six months with Tan at the National Gallery's new restaurant stood out as fun. I regularly make charitable donations to my community - to me it is a way to support causes that I care d
With the growth of low-cost trading platforms like Tiger and fractional shares, there are fewer barriers preventing individual investors with portfolios under $100,000 from investing in the same stocks as Wall Street. However Wall Street still has some advantages: 1. Time + Economy of Scale 2. Objective / Compensation 3. Emotion I'll break these down and then talk about how retail investors can combat this by buying and holding for the long-term. Time / Economy of Scale Picking individual stocks is hard and takes time to do your homework and to continue doing homework for the duration of the time you hold that stock. For Wall Street picking stocks is their full-time occupation, and they have access to major institutional research to inform their decisions. In addition because each pu