Wine Beats Russell Stocks as Liquid Investment in Swiss Study

For the ultimate in liquid investments, try top-quality wine, which has outperformed one benchmark U.S. stock index for 13 years and withstood two recessions.

That’s the conclusion of Philippe Masset and Jean-Philippe Weisskopf, two Switzerland-based economists who compared wine prices with the Russell 3000 Index between January 1996 and January 2009. The researchers studied more than 400,000 prices on regularly traded wines from the 13-year period, which covers two bull markets and two bear markets for stocks, to construct a general wine index and a gauge of top vintages. (more)