Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   Don't believe it Date:   10/27/2015 11:06:30 AM

His Dad loaned him $1M for a real estate deal.  He had way more than that available to him, not to mention the leverage of his Dad's prominent real estate business.  Look at it this way, his Dad's estate netted Trump between $40M and $200M, depending on who you ask.  But if you look at Trump's net worth in the mid 1980's and what it is today he has actually done a lousy job.  Fortune magazine estimated that if he had sinmply invested his money in a Dow index fund he would be worth over $13B insterad of the $4B he is today.  Trump says a lot of things that appeal to many conservatives, especially on immigration, but to support him because he is a brilliant businessman seems to me to be a bad idea.  He has been a medicore businessman at best.

And I am not talking about the real estate deals that went belly up.  That is the nature of real estate and any investor has some winners and some losers.  But if you look at the risks he took with his investments you would rightly expect a return way more than the paltry 300% he has gotten since the mid 1980s.  In comparison Bill Gates grew 7,000% and Warren Buffett close to 3,000%.  I wouldnt want them as my candidate either. In my view being a successful businessman does not exactly qualify you to be POTUS, but being a mediocre one even less so.  There may be lots of other reasons to support Trump but his business acumen isn't one of them.