Interesting thing I looked at today.
Current s&p500 value: 4920
S&p500 value in 1996: ~750
This means that the average growth rate of the s&p500 in the last 18 years is 6.7% (not inflation adjusted).
Just some perspective for the younger folks who have only been investing for the last 5-10 years and think that the stock market growing by 15-20% per year is “typical”.
It’s not typical. The last 5-10 years have been a massive bear market.
This isn’t to scare anyone, just to show folks that long term returns are much milder than recency bias would lead you to believe. Still a good investment, for sure.