This past decade has been titled by many the “Lost Decade” partially due to the low returns of stocks. While the decade is not over yet, as of Sep 30, 2009 the Total Stock Market Index has an annualized return of -.79%. $10,000 invested on January 1,2000 would be Worth only $9,103 almost ten years later. Although by December 31,2009 the number may turn slightly positive this decade has been one of practically no gains. As the decade comes to a close I decided to compile data on the performance of various asset classes. It turned out that while as a whole “The Lost Decade” is an appropriate term, for some stock categories it was far from a lost decade. I used Index Fund Advisors (IFA) Data for all the data presented below.
(I used data from January 1- Nov 30, 2009, However some asset classes only had data leading up to Sep 30, 2009 (the end of quarter 3)
for the rest of the article see my column on GuruFocus.com
