for the average investor (those of us not buying 100,000 shares of company x) stocks are really only for long term growth of your portfolio. However, there is a lot of money to be made in the real estate market. Plus your return on investment is much quicker.
I lost about $10,000 last year in the market, but made almost an extra $50,000 just buying buying houses and flipping them. My initial investment was only $5,000. After that I was working off the profits. Oh, and it was only 3 houses that I did last year.