I want to make 10% per year for 30 years.

[47outs]

What is the best (least risk, guaranteed?) way to get an annual return of 10%, every year?

[captZEEbo]

sign me up when you find out

[gull]

i am nigerian genrel who has millins but is locked up in bank. if you can help me out pay me all your money i garentee 10% rerun for life.

[BeL0wMe]

Well you could whore yourself out to 500 fat chicks, or 50 reallllly fat chicks a year....

[squiffy]

Supposedly average annual return for S&P 500 has been 11.8% from 1965 to 2000. Not sure what it would be if you added the data until 2006. Also if you invest in Vanguard, the return will be slightly lower due to taxes and trading costs, but close.

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2000pdf.pdf

[Mark1808]

[ QUOTE ]
What is the best (least risk, guaranteed?) way to get an annual return of 10%, every year?

[/ QUOTE ]

3 month Treasury Bills are currently around 5%, this is considered the risk free rate. Any return above tht will carry added risk as their is no free lunch in investments. The stock market returns are dependent on your starting point, you can pick 10 year periods where in fact the market declined over the entire period.

[gull]

There's no way to guarantee a return. However, we can look at the last eighty years or so and notice that the lowest 30-year return for small-value was 9%. The best way to get a relatively high return (like 10%) are to invest in the stock market.

[squiffy]

You can go to the library and borrow Stocks for the Long Run. Any edition is fine. It will give you a basic idea of the long term statistic.

I think the author is Siegel.

[dazraf69]

Maybe a better question is what kind of returns have stock pickers earned over say the last 5 or so years?

[DesertCat]

[ QUOTE ]
Supposedly average annual return for S&P 500 has been 11.8% from 1965 to 2000. Not sure what it would be if you added the data until 2006. Also if you invest in Vanguard, the return will be slightly lower due to taxes and trading costs, but close.

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2000pdf.pdf

[/ QUOTE ]

If you look at the latest Berkshire Annual report, you'll see that as of Jan 2005 S&P returns had declined to 10.3%. And it appears Buffett doesn't think future returns will be anything close to that.

[ QUOTE ]

I thought I'd run the numbers on what Buffett's original estimate would mean for the remaining nine and a half years or so of his 17-year forecast.

During the past seven and a half years, the market has returned just slightly better than 1.8% in terms of capital gains if you're measuring with the Dow -- but about 0% if you're judging by the more representative S&P 500. Dividends have been on the order of about 1.6%, on average, and inflation has been 2.7% annually. So real returns have essentially been zero. For real market returns of 5% annually over the 17-year period (ignoring, for the moment, the costs of investing) to materialize by 2017, we would need to pick up the pace and see roughly 8.5% real returns over the next 10 years.

Wait, 8.5% in real terms? Even after this recent market rise? That would be phenomenal. The historic average real returns of the market have been about 6.5% over the past 100 years. So are 8.5% real returns possible? Would Buffett really predict those types of 10-year returns today?

I highly doubt it.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
You can go to the library and borrow Stocks for the Long Run. Any edition is fine. It will give you a basic idea of the long term statistic.

[/ QUOTE ]

Has Siegel updated this since the bubble burst and the market went sideways? I recall he got a lot of criticism for using pretty skimpy data (esp. the pre 1900s data), and he wrote the book during the biggest bull market in history.

Not that I disagree that equities offer your best long term returns. I just think Siegel understates some of the risks.