Up or down, that old question.

Investing these days is a nightmare. As I indicate in the previous post, there are just too many investors and too much data, and outcomes depend as much on the decisions of one random finance minister somewhere (will there be QE3? What terms will Greece get from the EMU?). Whether Angela Merkel enjoys her coffee this morning may have powerful effects on your portfolio value.

So where does this leave us little guys?

I think the safest thing we can do is ignore all that stuff and recede back into longer timelines, where things make a little more sense. For example, the population is growing, and developing nations are using more and more energy. Oil is a finite resource, so hold some for the long term. Knowing (but not caring) that over the next year it could tank. Or, the US has been propped up on low interest rates and QE, but both can't continue forever.

While many folks think US bonds will crash when the world "wakes up" and sees what a terrible credit risk the US is, it's only a nominal credit risk (meaning we WILL pay back our obligations, we may just do so in devalued dollars). But I see it a little differently. I think the US bond will tank as soon as there's a clearly much better option. For example, booming global world growth.

But this all, in my opinion, goes back to confidence. People take risk when they're confident. There are innumerable confidence-destroying issues out there right now. Will China implode on a GDP that is far too heavily weighted on the real estate sector? Will the US in its "let's cut everything" mode ever be a viable global consumer again? Will Greece lead to Portugal lead to Spain, bringing down confidence in banks world over?

And the government personnel in charge of driving the outcomes of these issues seem hopeless. Is there anyone out there who wouldn't prefer an 8th grade honors class be running the USA rather than the tragicomic clown show that is the US Congress?

So, long story short, morons are in charge far more than markets right now. This leads to lack of visibility, which leads to lack of confidence, which leads to lack of the desire to take risk.

So yes, Apple will sell to China for decades. Own Apple.

But be wary of the generic concept of "stocks for the long run" in that if you just buy some index ETF you don't have to think about what you're owning. Here's a nice "stocks for the long run" graph for you to ponder.

Japan (the blue curve) is an industrious, developed nation with a high work ethic and a consistent trade surplus. And the US (the red curve) used to be full of hope and promise, but now the US is....um...what, at the moment?