My knee-jerk reaction is to point out that "even if you bought the S&P at the height of the dotcom bubble, the annualized return over the past 24 years was ~5.5% (not including dividends)"
And while I think this line of thinking is still more correct than not, I wonder how much I (and a lot of other folks in the US) are discounting the possibility of a prolonged period without growth.
Despite shocks like in 2000 and 2008, the S&P has spent very little time "underwater" over the past 50 years. But that's not the case if you look at something like the Nikkei, which took until this year to get back to its 1990 peak.
And while I think this line of thinking is still more correct than not, I wonder how much I (and a lot of other folks in the US) are discounting the possibility of a prolonged period without growth.
Despite shocks like in 2000 and 2008, the S&P has spent very little time "underwater" over the past 50 years. But that's not the case if you look at something like the Nikkei, which took until this year to get back to its 1990 peak.