Historical insights to help navigate current markets
Equity returns are volatile, so it takes very long histories to obtain a realistic understanding of what long run returns can tell us about the future.
The 21st century is now 25 years old. Measured since the start of 2000, stock returns have been lower than over the 20th century, though global equity investors still enjoyed an annualized real return of 3.5% and an equity risk premium relative to bills of 4.3%.
Yet while many people consider the long term to be ten or 20 years, the Yearbook demonstrates that much longer periods than 20 years are needed to understand trends in risk and return from stocks and bonds, because markets are so volatile and variable over very long periods.
Across 35 markets
The core of the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook is the long-run DMS database. This provides annual returns on stocks, bonds, bills, inflation and currencies for 35 markets. The unrivalled breadth and quality of its underlying data make the Yearbook the global authority on long-run asset performance.
Of the 35 markets covered, 23 have 125-year histories from 1900 to 2024. The remaining 12 markets have start dates in the second half of the 20th century, with either close to or more than 50 years of data. In addition, the Yearbook monitors 55 additional markets for which it has equity returns data for periods ranging from 14 to 49 years.
