Chimbu/Gnadenburg/404 etc,
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread, and while everyone knows you shouldn't take financial advice from pilots, it's clear some of you have a vast amount of knowledge on the matter.
However, Chimbu, you said :
Buying an asset that produces a negative return is not 'investing' its speculating on a capital gain - absent the capital gain (which is unsustainable in the long term) its a disaster waiting to happen.
Isn't speculation what capitalism is all about? When someone decides to start a business, they are speculating on what sort of demand there is and what sort of return they can achieve. If you relate it to Aviation, airlines speculate on routes/passenger numbers and therefore aircraft types and frequencies.
If no-one in the economy speculated, companies would not grow, jobs would not be created and there would be no growth.
Maybe I'm taking a simplistic view of things, but isn't speculation what makes the world go round?