In yesterday’s post we discussed the idea of valuing the stock market like a bond, which is inspired by the academic research and the historical record. Today, we apply the concept to the real world by plugging in some numbers in an effort to develop a bit of perspective on estimating the long-run return for the stock market. It’s an imperfect art, to be sure, and one that ultimately requires far more detail than we can provide here. But every journey starts with a first step.