The Myth of the Rising Stocks over Time

[Bolty]

My original post does not take into account dividend yields, stock splits, or buybacks.

I came into the thread late, but that was my immediate reaction to the original post - first, it comes from ZeroHedge, a site dedicated to manipulating truth to always present a world-is-falling viewpoint at all given times, and second, the data shown is just not factoring in a lot of data surrounding dividends and other elements that make up a significant amount of growth in a portfolio. Dividends alone account for roughly 40% of the growth of money invested in the S&P500 over decades.

There has been a completely insane amount of study of stock growth over the history of world stock markets. While it's true that the American stock market has enjoyed a growth rate higher than average due to its nearly century-long dominance of world economies, and that can't go on forever, it's also true that in the long term, there really isn't any better investment vehicle. If you can handle the volatility and potentially long periods of slow/no growth, as was the case from 1966 to 1981.