Tag: Investing Basics

If you extend the stock market’s average return back 20 years, for example, it falls to 9.8%. That’s consistent with the long-term average over the last 200 years. To anyone whose stock trading experience spans the 12 years since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), that may seem disappointingly low. But those 12 years are exceptional. Only one of them produced a negative return — 2018. Even then, the Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell-induced crash in the fourth quarter of that year immediately reversed in 2019, when the market rocketed 31.5%.Over the last two centuries, on the other hand, one out of every four years produces a negative return. That raises an important question for all investors. On what are your expectations for the next decade based? Could they be leading you into a trap?