Average Stock Market Returns

Average stock market returns

Over long time series, a 6.6% real return is realistic in the stock market. Real return means the return after inflation, in other words the actual growth in purchasing power.

By long time series I mean the research by Jeremy Siegel, which calculated the inflation-adjusted real return of the US stock market to be 6.6% over 214 years (1801–2015).

Martin Paasi wrote a good blog post (in Finnish) on the topic in 2016.