Historical Market Returns: Useful or Useless?

You often hear people quote historical stock and bond returns. But are they useful to investors? What lessons can you take from them to help with your portfolio construction? What challenges do historical investment returns have concerning dividend reinvestment and commissions? What about bond historical averages given our low-interest-rate environment?

S&P 500 Index Total Returns 1928- 2020

History of index funds and dividend reinvestment

Treasury Bonds historical returns 1928-2020

Probabilities based on historical stock returns

S&P 500 Index Total Return by decade

Sources for historical return data

Mentioned in this Episode:

Derek Moore’s Book Broken Pie Chart https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Pie-Chart-Investment-Portfolio/dp/1787435547?ref_=nav_signin&

Robert Shiller historical market data http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm

Aswath Damadoran website, blog, and data https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/

Robert Shiller book Irrational Exuberance https://www.amazon.com/Irrational-Exuberance-Revised-Expanded-Third/dp/0691173125?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1628453580&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=tradesurfer-20&linkId=eea68424f97b1bf760a2d5bc1df2120a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Jeremy Seigel book Stocks for the Long Run https://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Long-Run-Definitive-Investment-dp-0071800514/dp/0071800514?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=&linkCode=ll1&tag=tradesurfer-20&linkId=e34a4e3f2b776fcd7a89fa9e1297e9cc&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl