So looks like we are going lower until the 10 year return goes negative for a while, scares everyone out of stocks, and produces a new "Death of Equities" magazine cover. S&P 1000 anyone? The strange thing is that 1998-2008 has been THE greatest trading/speculating decade I can imagine. You had an insane bubble where many made 10k into $1 mill+ in 2-3 years, the shorting/put-buying opportunity of a lifetime, a great deep value buying opportunity in 2003, a 10 year real estate boom, a commodity boom, and now in the last 18 months yet another amazing opportunity with short financials and real estate stocks with loads of intraday volatility too and on four separate occasions you had great buying opportunities during market panics. Now I'm not saying most, few, or even any trader could have played all of those. I missed quite a few, that's for sure. But anyone with a trading bone in their body could have played at least 1 or 2. If someone points to the 1998-08 period as a "lost decade", I would have to counter that IMO it had more trading opportunities than anyone could handle. What would scare me is a 10 year period where nothing at all happens, the markets just dry up and there is no volatility intraday OR over the longer-term. But I'm not sure that has ever happened or ever will. It really does seem that the old trading saw is correct - "there's always a bull market somewhere". This is GREAT news for traders, as opposed to buy & hold investors. When stocks get creamed e.g. 1929-32, or 2000-2002, there is huge volatility intraday, and great shorting opportunities longer-term. When stocks have a 3-4 year major rebound, even in the context of a stagnant decade (e.g. 1930s, 1970s, 2000s), you can make a fortune with buy & hold or momentum investing/trading. When inflation creams both stocks and bonds, commodities are on fire. Real estate will be booming or busting most of the time. There's always a bull market somewhere. And even if there was no bull market, there's at least a crazy action volatile bear market.
On the same website: http://www.investinvalue.com/ on the left side under the category SELECTING choose World Countries which will take you here: http://www.investinvalue.com/1/places.php and then choose a country (or just choose a country under SELECTING). Have a nice trip.
Its kind of dumb to look at it from 1998 to 2008. Its too arbitrary. For example if i go back 2 months to nomvember of 1997 to nov 2007 the return is over 60% plus dividends. I guess its now people like to take the day before the crash of the 1929 market and say it took those people x amount of years to make there $ back. They fail to take into consideration how much the market was up before the arbitrary number
give me a break. yeah the s&p would of returned much more if any of the 2000 or 2004 candidates won instead of bush.
The logarithmic chart is more valuable in comparing this sort of data as the linear chart would make any inferences virtually impossible.