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Comment by wavegeek | Hacker News Reader

> over that 10-20 year cycle the market is always net up

This is simply not true especially if you take inflation into account.

And even more so if you look outside the US (one of the top 1% of market performers over the last 100 years - hindsight bias).

For example Japan total return index had a 30 year drawdown post 1989 even in nominal terms. The US market from 1966-1992 total inflation adjusted return (26 years) was zero. http://www.simplestockinvesting.com/SP500-historical-real-to...

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You may be right, but I don't think we should compare ourselves to Japan, or cite them as an example in discussions about economics. Japan's priorities are totally different to most countries. They prefer to work hard at preserving the status quo, than chasing growth and change. Japan has many businesses that are hundreds, even thousands of years old, and still selling the same stuff. Many of these businesses have the same goal; to survive the next 50 years with 2% growth p.a.

Japan is one of the older civilisations with a recorded history, but "thousands of years old" businesses is stretching it more than a little.

Japan (population 125 million) is third in the world in GDP, with China (population over 1 billion) and the US (population 330 million) ahead of it. More remarkably this is from a tectonically unstable, volcanic island chain with limited natural resources, which is in stark contrast to either the US or China. This is probably an underestimate as they have a considerable secondary investment/production effort going on across Asia.

Japan's priorities are the same as everybody else's, they're just rather good at disguising that.

From the years living in Japan I think the previous poster is right on a cultural level.

I mean if you think about it, 6 of the top 10 oldest companies are Japanese [1]. That says something about the value of continuity and stability in Japan's mindset. I don't see that changing any time soon tbh. (And yes, some of them are a "thousand" year old, though of course not thousand"s")

[1] : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

Construction company founded 1443 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi

>The US market from 1966-1992 total inflation adjusted return (26 years) was zero.

This was during a period when high dividend stocks were in fashion. I'm willing to bet that during that period stocks probably beat almost every other form of investment with regards to profits.

You might want to look at interest rates during that period... especially after 1973.

> I'm willing to bet that during that period stocks probably beat almost every other form of investment with regards to profits.

This illustrate why makes me uneasy of current times, that blind faith in the stock market as the ultimate investment. From FIRE communities to r/wallstreetbets to regular retirement to professional fund manager, don't ask question and join the dance, it always was and always will be 6-8% per year, it's a law of nature.

You are replying with a fixed period that confirms your claim while comment OP was talking about total returns which you can be sure are not zero. If you are handpicking periods you can find a month in the last 2 years that was negative and make a claim that the stock market didn't go up but it did, > 100%.

Real Total return (inflation adjusted, dividends included) of SP500 has been negative in two decades. 1970s and 2000s.

The original claim is 10-20 years. That's a valid ballpark estimate. There can be lost decades, but when you get closer to 20 years, it has been all good.

ps. If you spread the entry into market into 5-10 years there has never been a decade of zero or negative returns (total, inflation adjusted).

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