Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to think you can get meaningful answers as to what is possible with stocks by looking at so few years/crashes.Do not kid yourself into thinking "the stock market is safe now, the business cycle has been tamed, from now on crashes will all be like 2020."
That said, I think there is a more interesting possibility about what is possible with inflation, with evidence going back much farther.
The basic idea would be that in the modern monetary system that has been place since Bretton Woods fully phased out, unexpected inflation/disinflation has in fact been successfully moderated.
This was looking like a VERY promising hypothesis as of the early 2000s, and then we got a major disinflationary crisis with the Great Recession, and a major inflationary crisis with COVID.
However, the Great Recession did not in fact turn into another Great Depression. And while it is a bit TBD, so far it doesn't seem like the COVID inflationary spike has turned into the 1970s.
If true this, would in fact imply that maybe really long bad periods for stock real returns are considerably less likely. Over something like 5 years, the dot com and GFC busts were both bad. Over 10 years, the combined "lost decade" was still bad. But over 15 years--well, it wasn't a boom period, but it wasn't negative real, unlike 67-82, say. And if you were globally diversified, the worst real ret
Personally--I actually kinda buy this. Not at 5 years, but somewhere between 10 and 15 years, my concerns about negative real returns with a globally diversified portfolio really do fade away.
But at 1-5 years? I anticipate plenty more "fun" times still to come.
Statistics: Posted by NiceUnparticularMan — Mon Aug 25, 2025 8:43 am — Replies 76 — Views 4881