The 2000s have been the worst decade for U.S. stocks in 200 years, reports yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, it’s been a somewhat better decade for the Global Market Index, a passively weighted mix of all the major asset classes that’s the benchmark for our sister publication, The Beta Investment Report.
There are still two weeks left to 2009 and the decade and so it’s not over until it’s over. But barring a massive change in prices in the days ahead, the mystery is fading quickly for year- and decade-end numbers. Using performance through the end of last month, the 10-year annualized total returns for the major asset classes and GMI stack up as follows:
U.S stocks were dead last, returning a trifling 0.1% on an annualized basis for the past 10 years. By contrast, the best performer among the major asset classes has been emerging market bonds, which soared by an 11.5% annualized total return. As for our Global Market Index, it returned 4.2% over the past decade.