Why Invest in a great Stocks?
Let us now take a look at the ‘big picture ‘ for investment returns for varied asset sectors vs inflation during the last 70 years. This could give us a broad viewpoint on the right way to best employ our investment funds. I think it is prudent that every investor regardless of age or level of investment experience should diversify their investments between property, stocks and fixed income investments. The table below compares the long term return performance for Treasury Bills, Gold, Treasury Bonds, company bonds, home costs and common stocks.
Kind of Asset Class:
Treasury Bills: 30-Day Maturity
Treasury Notes: 5-Year Maturity
Home Prices: Home Price Appreciation (national average) *
Common Stocks: S&P 500 Stock Index Total Return with
dividends reinvested
Corporate Bonds: 20-Year Corporate bonds
Gold Price: London PM Fix
* Information Source: US Census Bureau and National Association of Realtors
This table reveals that the average annual rate of inflation over the 70-Year period was 4.0%. Treasury Bills produced a 4.1% yearly compounded return over the same period. After accounting for inflation, T-Bills only produced an annual ‘real ‘ return
of 0.1%. Despite the strong return performance for gold bars during the past several years, over the long run gold only produced a 1.1% annual real return after accounting for inflation. Although gold is generally considered a hedge against inflation, the 1.1% annual real return does not provide much of a return outside the inflationary rate. 5-Year Treasury Notes produced a 1.5% yearly real return, company bonds a 1.7% real return and home prices appreciated at a once a year rate of 2.1% after accounting for inflation.
Only stocks offer a suggestive return after accounting for inflation. The S&P 500 Index with dividends reinvested produced an inflation changed compounded yearly return of 6.8%. A $1,000 investment in the S&P 500 Index grew to $1,287,957 producing a 128,696% total return. Based mostly on this long term historical return data, only stocks offer a real rate of return after accounting for inflation. Home costs and gold are traditionally viewed as inflation hedges. However , the inflation adjusted yearly return for stocks of 6.8% was essentially more than three times greater than the inflation altered return of 2.1% for home costs.
This raises the question. Why are stocks the genuine performance winner compared with other asset classes and why do stocks supply the only important real return after accounting for inflation? In the following Chapter we're going to discover why stocks supply the best real return compared to all other investments.
January 28, 2012 | Posted by Chuck Hughes
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