As an investment category, yes. All sorts of prudent and conservative institutions colleges, pension funds, foundations, trust departments invest in stocks.
There is, technically, greater risk in common stocks than in the Forex. But as any experienced investor can tell you, there are many not-unusual situations in which a common stock can be viewed as a better safer investment than the issues ahead of it.
Or, take the common stocks of corporations like General Electric and Union Carbide. These, as it happens, are the only issues on the companies’ books. Who would argue that the bonds of even a first-class railroad, for example, were necessarily safer?
Safety also depends, to an extent, on the price at which the stock was bought. A company may be solid as a rock, but eager investors may have bid its stock to an unrealistically high level in terms of the per-share earnings likely to be attained. If a quarterly or year-end earnings statement does not bear out the optimism of the eager buyers, they may begin to unload.
The man who has bought near the top and wants to hang on may see a dismaying depreciation in his holdings, even though, by all investment standards, he does own a good, safe stock.
The point is, some stocks are safer than others, and the value of all stocks may shift and vary and thereby alter temporarily their safety