Skip to content

Buying a home? Check out our great rates. Terms and conditions apply. Loans subject to credit approval. NMLS #406389

Get Started 863-222-7005

Average Can Be Hard to Achieve

Chart shows the 20-year annualized returns by asset class (2002 - 20212) Some of the topics included: cash, inflation, average investor, bonds, S&P 500

Contents

Today’s Chart of the Day comes from Compounding Quality, @QCompounding on Twitter, and shows that over the last 20 years, the average investor realized only an annual return of 3.6%. This is less than 4.3% on bonds, and not much higher than inflation of 2.2%, meaning that many just barely broke even after inflation and taxes. This can be compared to a return of 9.5% on the large-cap stock index, or 7.4% for even a conservative generic portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds.

What does this tell us? That investor’s behavior of selling when they should be buying, and buying when they should be selling, ends up hurting returns more than the type of investments made.