“The average long-term experience in investing is never surprising, but the short- term experience is always surprising.” – Charley Ellis The stock market has basically gone nowhere for a while now. According to the sharp team over at Bespoke Investment Group, the S&P 500 has crossed the 2100 level to the upside 25 times over…

In his latest monthly missive, Bill Gross shares some thoughts on financial market returns from the past four decades: Since the inception of the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate or Lehman Bond index in 1976, investment grade bond markets have provided conservative investors with a 7.47% compound return with remarkably little volatility. An observer of the…

There will be roughly 10,000 baby boomers retiring every single day for the next 20 years or so. Entire industries and jobs are going to need to be created for the sole purpose of servicing this group. Healthcare comes to mind, but financial services will be in high demand as well, especially when you consider…

One of the most impressive long-term stock market statistics has to be the historical 30 year returns on the S&P 500: This graph shows the rolling annual 30 year returns from the corresponding start dates. The worst 30 year return — using rolling monthly performance — occurred at the height of the market just before…

Plenty of people in the finance world were talking about the study put out last week by the giant consulting firm McKinsey on the prospects for lower market returns over the next 30 years than we’ve experienced over the past 30. Here are the numbers from the report: And here’s the takeaway from Bloomberg: Turning 30…

The Great Financial Crisis was missed by such a large number of pundits, economists and investors that during the ensuing recovery we’ve seen a huge influx in the number of people trying to predict a the next downturn. People desperately want to call the next big one before it hits. First it was fears of…

In a former life I used to look over hundreds of private equity fund pitches every year for investment opportunities. A few things stood out in the similarities of these funds: Every single one of them claimed to be top quartile — either through past returns or the promise of future returns. 90-95% of funds…

There’s been something of a bull market in people who consider themselves a contrarian investor in recent years. People took notice of those who called the tech bubble in the late-1990s, the the real estate bubble in the mid-2000s or the bottom of the stock market in early 2009. Everyone would now like to think…

Top quartile private equity performance is something every institutional fund aspires to. Of course, every single PE fund claims to be top quartile, which would seem to be mathematically impossible. David Swensen and his team at Yale have put together one of the most enviable track records in this space. This passage comes from the…

There was a scary chart flying around a couple months ago showing how basically no asset class was working for investors. These numbers, provided by James Picerno at The Capital Speculator, showed that every major asset class or category showed a negative one year return through early September: This was pretty crazy — stocks, bonds…