U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022
So at ~7% it takes 10 years to double your money. So that gives one about 4 doublings in ones working career. So, a bad ten year stretch like 98-08 which provided basically 0% over the decade makes a huge difference in ones ability to retire based solely on 401K&#x2F;etc style returns and should be a strong argument in favor of defined benefit plans that basically pool the risk over a much longer horizon vs going it alone.<p>I would have expected someone to create a retirement insurance pool type thing that returns something close to the long term average s&amp;p returns. But if you go looking for such a thing, the returns are closer to 1&#x2F;2 the s&amp;p. Its really the kind of thing the government should backstop but... &quot;socialism&quot; even if the math works out. Which really pisses me off because its apparently ok to &quot;socalize&quot; the poor mgmt at $BIGCORP that gets a handout once a decade or so at the current rate after spending billions on stock by backs but not socialize individual retirement risk in a meaningful way.