There is no “real” money. It’s all speculative based on what value people assign to it. For example, you may have noticed that the US dollar has become worth significantly less in recent years. Shares and fiat currency just have different volatility.
The US dollar has outpaced nearly every other global currency. Five years ago you’d get 100 yen to the dollar. Now you get 150.
But cartelization of the supply chain means we don’t get to see the benefits of low import prices. The difference all goes to business profit, while real increases in material and labor get passed on to the consumer.
Netflix buys anime for pennies on the dollar and sells it back at escalating rates. They spend less and we pay more.
The US dollar was just an example so this discussion is tangential to the point I was trying to make. That said, your argument does not support an increasing value of the dollar - it only says it has increased in value relative to other currencies. But I’m sure you know that inflation has been staggeringly high which means you get less food on the table for a dollar, and salaries have not been keeping up.
Or put in other words, if you were to invest in US dollars instead of shares then you would have seen the value of your portfolio going down, in terms of what it can get you at Costco.
